What is it about?

Monothematic and uni-dimensional approaches to research are delimiting, and miss much in developing understanding based on lived experience. The arts have a powerful role to play in increasing engagement with, inquiry into, expression of, and capacity for life. Accordingly this article explores how a multithematic and multi-dimensional approach was enabled by a festival framework as a methodological approach to research. The strength and limitations of the methodological approach is discussed revealing its possibilities.

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Why is it important?

The use of a festival framework as a methodological approach to research is innovative and therefore offers a new perspective in arts-based research.

Perspectives

The arts and in particular a festival format offers possibilities for negotiating cultural identity and production of culture. This article, based on a community-based arts project involving young people of an African Australian descent explains the process and the outcomes of the festival experience. The young people involved in the project explored issues pertaining to their cultural identities through the arts. Memory and in particular African cultural memory was a key aspect of the research process. African cultural memory was problematized and therefore put to good use in terms of cultural revaluation and essence. Through a third space the festival as a research method revealed the vitality of the arts in cultural identity negotiation and cultural production.

Dr Peter Mbago Wakholi
African Cultural Memory Arts Festival (ACMAF)

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This page is a summary of: Festival as methodology: the African cultural youth arts festival, Qualitative Research Journal, May 2015, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/qrj-01-2015-0012.
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