Critical Creative Methods Lab: Experiment. Play. Transform.

The University of Greenwich offers two days of hands-on, mind-expanding critical creative methods that will invigorate your research and practice, spark new ideas, and challenge the way you think about knowledge production. This is not just a workshop - it’s an experimental space where theory meets practice in dynamic ways.

Through a series of interactive hands-on workshops led by experts, you will practice using methods such as... poetic syntax and performance, co-production, participatory-action research, collage-making, audio scenarios, improvising methods, photo voice, rich picturing, emotional mapping, critical approaches to analysing creative outputs.

This initiative is organised by the Creative Methods Working Group, Centre for Communities and Social Justice and sponsored by the Institute for Communities and Environments.

Agenda

DAY ONE:

Collage: This workshop explores the history and legacies of Section 28, the homophobic UK legislation in force from 1988–2003. Using archival newspaper materials, participants will creatively respond to this history through collage in a supportive and empowering “brave space”. Through humour, anger and joy, participants will subvert harmful narratives and imagine alternative futures beyond the afterlives of Section 28. The workshop also reflects on the possibilities and limitations of collage as a creative and political method.

Building bridges: Research suggests that academic research is often seen as disconnected from the practical realities of civil society organisations, which face significant time, funding and resource pressures (Hardwick et al., 2015). This interactive session brings together academics and practitioners to explore how creative methods can support more ethical, accessible and collaborative research partnerships. Through discussion and hands-on activities, participants will examine barriers, assumptions and aspirations surrounding evidence-based practice, while considering how creative approaches can help bridge gaps between universities and civil society organisations.

Performance: This workshop explores how poetry, performance and satire can activate political agency and challenge climate inaction. Drawing on Paulo Freire and Kari Marie Norgaard, the workshop examines how neoliberal social norms sustain “socially organised denial” around the climate crisis. Using the revolutionary figure of Rosa Luxemburg as a creative lens, the session combines performance, discussion and embodied group exercises to imagine eco-socialist alternatives, radical care and new ways of being.

Participatory action research: Details to follow

DAY TWO:

Improv: This interactive workshop explores improvisation, responsiveness and adaptivity within creative research methods. Bringing together researchers and practitioners using creative, sensory, visual and mobile approaches, the session examines improvisation as both a research practice and a method for generating new knowledge. Drawing on queer methods and interdisciplinary research, participants will discuss the tensions between fluidity and structure in research design. Through examples, discussion and collaborative activities, the workshop creates space to reflect on experiences of improvising methods and responsive research practice.

Audio: This workshop introduces a participatory creative method for designing immersive audio simulations exploring complex social interactions. Using forum theatre, improvisation and participatory storytelling, participants will collaboratively create short simulation scenarios with the SIM MAKER platform. Through role-play, storyboarding and audio recording, groups will translate lived experiences into interactive learning environments. The session explores how simulation can support empathy, critical reflection and experiential learning, while demonstrating its potential as both a teaching tool and a creative research method for co-designed community engagement.

Emotional Mapping: This workshop explores emotional mapping as a creative method for examining spatial justice, inequality and exclusion. Drawing on research into institutional spaces such as prisons and hospitals, participants will create and analyse emotional maps to reflect on how spaces shape embodied experiences, emotions and social relations. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s concept of spatial justice, the session considers how emotional responses to everyday and institutional environments can reveal broader processes of oppression, precarity and marginalisation, while imagining more inclusive and socially just spatial futures.

Ambulation: This workshop invites participants to pause and reflect on the contemporary university as a culture shaped by metrics and measurement. Disconnecting from digital systems, participants will undertake an audio-guided walk around campus focused on embodied, sensory and intuitive experience. Through physical exploration, contemplation, active listening and reflective dialogue, the session explores simple creative methods for grounding pedagogic practice. The workshop encourages participants to reconnect with intuition, embodiment and qualitative ways of thinking about teaching, learning and research.

How do I analyse it: This workshop explores the analytical possibilities and challenges of working with creative and participatory research data in migration studies. Drawing on the MigRefHealth project, it examines methods including collage, zine-making, walking interviews and visual artefacts used to explore migrants’ experiences of health and belonging. The session introduces an intertextual framework for analysing verbal, visual and sensory data, moving from descriptive coding to broader interpretative narratives. Participants will also have the opportunity to collaboratively analyse selected creative artefacts and reflect on meaning-making processes.