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135 (II): Arts-based research in urban geography: Re-imagining urban lifeworlds (II)
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| Session Abstract | |
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Urban public spaces are dynamic social, cultural, and political arenas that are filled with meaning and that are constantly evolving as individuals and communities interact with them. In this way, urban spaces are living texts, where each street corner, park, and building tells a story shaped by myriad interactions and histories that have unfolded over time. They are, however, also marked by unequal power relations that manifest in diverse ways, leading to varying perceptions and experiences among individuals and groups. To make these multiple, differing meanings accessible, it is crucial to employ inclusive and creative research methodologies that aim to break with long-established hierarchies. While qualitative and quantitative research methods have traditionally been used to generate knowledge about urban spaces, arts-based research methods hold the promise to create new perspectives for research, to chart alternative pathways for knowledge creation, and to highlight aspects of lived urbanity that have been unnoticed or under-researched. They expand the toolkit of the urban geographer by making urban spaces accessible through aesthetic approaches and by providing means to express complex emotional and affective meanings. Arts-based research methods can foster citizen participation, give marginalized people a voice, and create new spatialities in different media that transform our traditional way of seeing things. Hence, they can provide the means and media to re-imagine urban lifeworlds and re-invent the ways we live together in shared urban environments. For this session, we invite research that has developed innovative, arts-based research approaches to examine how lived experience and individual life trajectories influence our understanding of urban spaces and the complex layers of identity and belonging defining our cities. We welcome contributions on the following topics: – Arts-based research as a method and/or research perspective within urban studies, advancing the toolkit of geographical research and providing insights into innovative research techniques – Research focusing on the plurality of voices, meanings, and experiences inscribed into the urban fabric. – Research that prioritizes marginalized voices, aiming to make research more inclusive. – Research that emphasizes citizen participation and the co-creation of urban spaces. | |
| Presentations | |
Bottom-up literary production on the margins of the city. Confluences of political and literary participatory practices in Barcelona KU Leuven, Belgium This paper examines participatory governance models and local policies of urban citizenship as sociopolitical and cultural tools that facilitate literary engagement among displaced communities and help create alternative imaginings of the city. Studying both political and literary practices through a local and small-scale lens, the paper focusses on En Palabras, a civil society initiative in Barcelona that promotes collective storytelling among the Latin American community. I contextualize its activities in relation to the participatory and cosmopolitan policy agenda of Barcelona en Comú, the citizen platform governing the city at the time the organization was created. While urban citizenship policies are often seen as rights-giving practices that enable multiple forms of legal identification for unauthorized migrants, the paper shows how the promotion of cultural expression of minorities through writing can act as a bottom-up, rights-claimingactivity that enables migrants to carve a symbolic space within the local public sphere. I illustrate this subjective reappropriation of the city through a (para)textual analysis of Intraducibles / Intraduïbles, En Palabras’ bilingual anthology published in 2024. The publication offers an alternative cartography of Barcelona by crossing Catalan, peninsular as well as Latin American Spanish and incorporating images of the city that show the authors’ personal entanglement with the urban space described in the texts. These creative engagements with the city redefine notions of national (and regional) identity and add an affective dimension to local participatory policies, translating collective measures into tangible, singular acts of speaking up and taking space.
Urban green between top-down affective atmospheres and intimacy: an artistic-geographic research project to foster subjective relations with Le Cascine park in Florence University of Florence, Italy Albeit enjoying considerable public recognition as the biggest public park of Florence, Italy, Le Cascine is subject to a discursive transformation that gradually reshapes the park’s overall affective atmosphere through ideas of fear, insecurity, and stigmatisation of the (racialized and classed) “other”. Approaching Le Cascine not simply as living but also as lived urban text, this contribution presents an arts-based urban-geographic research with a three-fold aim: to question the dominant affective atmosphere; to invent ways to enter inside it together with people who cross it; and to contribute to its remoulding in inclusive, creative, and participatory ways. The “Vis-à-vis with the park” project, a collaboration between three geographers and an illustrator, consists of a handcrafted photo booth simulation popping up in the park wherein passers-by can enter to become research participants. Departing from one out of seven available panoramas of the Cascine (designed purposefully so as to represent the park’s variable aspects), the illustrator intervenes on the panorama inspired by the unfolding guided discussion around the participant’s relationship with the park. Inside the park’s abstracted affective atmosphere, “Vis-à-vis” produces an intimate spatiality that enables the emergence of emotions, memories and personal relations. Therefore, an alternative inter-subjective micro-atmosphere is shaped momentarily allowing us to reveal the park’s alternative affective dimensions, as well as to give space to the participants’ agency in knowledge production: With the researchers remaining outside of the booth to not disrupt the intimacy, the participant’s words guide the illustrator’s hand thus co-producing a personalised visual product. The project is telling also in performative terms: The booth’s out-of-place visibility, reinforced by the structure’s temporary, pop-up character, allows us to reach a sample of park users that would have been difficult to reach through “conventional” methods. Moreover, the unusual, playful and mysterious character of the practice resulted in a spontaneous engagement of participants. Whilst the dominant affective atmosphere constructs textually Le Cascine as a potential spatial “other” to Florence’s homogenized and pacified city centre, the creative, affective and performative dimensions of the “Vis-à-vis”, together with its artistic-geographic representations, allows for a counter-atmosphere based on intimacy, inter-subjectivity, and the more-than-textual. Layering Perspectives: Printmaking as a Method to Explore Urban Lifeworlds Austrian Academy of Science, Austria This paper introduces printmaking as an innovative arts-based research method that enhances the study of urban spaces by visualizing the layered, complex and multifaceted perceptions of urban citizens. Printmaking techniques are used not only as a tool to explore physical spaces but also as a mean to make on-site interventions and visualize ideas, emotions, and experiences of participants. For this contribution we engage children and elderly people in a typical Viennese park located in the 16th district, to explore the question how different users experience, perceive and use the space. Through the use of various stencil techniques, we provide participants with a medium to express feelings, memories and ideas connected to the park, allowing for a nuanced exploration of how different groups experience the same urban environment. The use of printmaking as a participatory tool not only empowers participants but also contributes to the co-creation of urban knowledge, revealing layers of identity, belonging, and emotional attachment that are often excluded from conventional research. In particular, the method mirrors the layering effect of stencils, revealing multiple perspectives that would otherwise be overlooked in traditional research approaches. The paper argues that printmaking as an arts-based method can expand the toolkit of urban studies by offering new ways to represent urban spaces and experiences. It demonstrates how this approach makes it possible to include often overlooked voices and to adapt the research tools according to the needs of research participants. For example, when working with small children, it is possible to let them design and visualize memories and ideas concerning a particular place and its surroundings. Similarly, when working with elderly people, printmaking offers an accessible and creative medium that allows for the expression of their personal histories, emotions, and connections to urban spaces. | |