Description
In recent years, participatory visual methods have gained prominence in social research, offering innovative ways to engage with participants and explore complex social phenomena. This paper presents the diverse array of visual, participatory, and transformative pedagogical methods to collect data and disseminate the findings of my PhD in Geography, which examines the effects of “more-than-rational” (sensations, emotions) and spatial dimensions (at body, domestic kitchen, and foodscape scales) on everyday food practices in Ecuador, Argentina and Spain. Through the utilisation of techniques such as collage, body mapping, social cartography, collective drawings and theatrical body postures, collaboration with participants and artists was undertaken to valorise this visual material and create additional visual products for dissemination, namely the fansines “Come y Habla” (Lamotte et al., 2024) and the videoclip “(Re)posionar(se) en el sistema alimentario”. A dialogue using the World Café method with the panel participants is proposed to address the methodological questions that emerged from this experience. The collective reflection will focus on a) whether interactive creative visual methods are always, and for whom (researchers, participants, final audience…), “transformative”; b) how collaboration with artists should be conducted to achieve a balance between the expression of the participants' voices, scientific interest, and aesthetics; c) how situated visual research results should be disseminated in other cultural contexts; d) what ethical considerations should be followed in collaborative visual research. In conclusion, a discussion is proposed on the development of visual research methods that can be implemented with minimal resources in pursuit of degrowth and sustainability principles, as for research projects with constrained financial resources. The outcomes of the discussion may be presented in a comic strip format, although alternative presentation methods could be considered.
