Analyses from an A/r/tographic perspective of maintaining participatory flow with the intention of enhancing empowerment during a school-community art & craft project

Research Question: How can an artisan-facilitator maintain participatory flow with the intention of enhancing empowerment during a school-community art & craft project? This interdisciplinary research is focused on the facilitation of participatory flow during a school-community art & craft project, aiming to understand how an artisan- facilitator may maintain participatory flow (Lucas, 2018; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and conclusively contribute to empowerment. Reliance on trust as a synergist is explored further. Being practice-led (Smith & Dean, 2009) and self-reflective (McIntosh, 2010), the research draws on my own 18 years of practice as an artisan-facilitator. This is considered within the context of a literature review. An a/r/tographic framework (Springgay et al., 2008) is applied to comprehend this wider art & craft practice as a process of living inquiry. Interview data, in respect of the impressions of participatory flow, and video data of engagement in respect of the artisan-facilitator’s role in the maintenance of participatory flow is processed, partially by multimodal analysis (Kress, 2010). Contributing to the interdisciplinary fields of participatory art & craft and education, the documentation is comprised of the thesis, the interactive website (www.wiseninggate.uk), video footage (not publicly available) and a portfolio of artefacts. The research has concluded that the largely understated role of an artisan- facilitator requires profession-specific knowledge and skills for maintaining participatory flow through creating trust in the group. The success of a participatory project depends more on the facilitator than it had previously been thought and this may require further acknowledgement of this role, which in turn, may necessitate expansion of the relevant training system. The research argues that engaging in haptic learning as a shared experience, is vital in a digital age and recommends enabling more opportunities for participatory art & craft in the school curriculum. It also suggests that initiatives, like the Schoodio (www.schoodio.co.uk), the successor to this research, have an important role in the society of today