Why bother with arts-based methods in intercultural education research? A reflection on drama pedagogy to explore intercultural experiences

In my paper I review the value of arts-based methods for intercultural education research. Giving examples from a research project which explored international students' intercultural experiences through drama-based workshops, I discuss why arts-based methods capitalise on those 'messy' dimensions of research (emotions, uncertainties, bodily sensations, the untranslatable) that we are normally trying to avoid, in order to arrive at 'coherent' research accounts. Intercultural experiences and memories are often bound up in these more messy dimensions and the act of remembering and reflecting on them can be an emotional, even embodied affair. This is, however, advantageous for arts-based methods which live off such complexity and thereby enrich the texture of research, by acknowledging and 'playing with' non-verbal, embodied dimensions. Drama pedagogy for example doesn't put participants under the pressure of having to give coherent, individual accounts (in a second language) of experiences that are often sketchy, evolving and can be sometimes only remembered collectively. Through drama pedagogy's focus on collaboration and embodiment, there lies instead an exciting potential for multi-textured research encounters which embrace research methods as creative translation practices full of dialectical ruptures and metaphoric gaps. As a consequence, I formulate the value of arts-based research methods through a transgressive form of validity which draws on feminist methodologist Patti Lather