Creative-relational inquiry is a concept – a (non-)methodology, a conceptual-(non-)methodology, an approach, a way of doing (none of these quite works, though – creative-relational inquiry is necessarily elusive and slippery) – that is interested in opening up to experimentation, process and novelty (Murray, 2020). It resists definition (‘Creative-relational inquiry is…), resists being confined, resists sitting still. It wants to play, to move. Through its experimentation, it nurtures all processes by nudging them along, with flailing arms, creating movement in the (more-than-)writing process. It can provide momentum in collusion with practices other than writing, with a valuing of each of them as legitimate ways of thinking and knowing.
By taking this workshop, we hope that you will develop a new, playful creative-relating with the concepts that you think and write with in your work and that your concepts will, in turn, come alive differently and be freed to take new directions.
In this workshop we will offer a background, a genealogy, some stories perhaps, for creative-relational inquiry – where the concept comes from, who has put it to work and how, etc.– and offer some readings. At its heart the workshop will experiment with three techniques for thinking playfully – creative-relationally – with concepts in a way that aims to provide movement in the researching process:
1. Concept speed-dating – putting one concept into conversation – into dance – with another. What might happen? What might be possible?
2. A play date with ‘creative-relational’: what happens if we drop ‘creative-relational’ into writing? What does it make possible?
3. Not the hyphen – there’s a hyphen in ‘creative-relational’ and it does something. What if it’s not a hyphen? What if we replace it with something else, a different way of connecting (a wave, a lightning bolt)?
Participants will be encouraged to put these techniques to work within their own current projects to see how this might generate movement, energy, life; a spark for life.
References
Harris, Anne (Dan). "Creative-Relational Inquiry: The Power of the Small." Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2020): 16-25.
Hofsess, Brooke Anne. "Follow the Plants: Variations on Social Warming as Creative-Relational Inquiry." Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2020): 85-91.
Jones, Stacy Holman. "The Empty Space and Creative-Relational Inquiry." Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2020): 114-119.
Murray, Fiona Alana. "The Emergencies of Creative-Relational Inquiry." Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9, no. 2 (2020): 26-39.
Wyatt, Jonathan. Therapy, stand-up, and the gesture of writing: Towards creative-relational inquiry. Routledge, 2018.
Andrew Mark Gillott is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport at the University of Stirling. His book, Writing Sensation: Sense, Events, and Encounters with Creative-Relational Inquiry is published by Routledge in Spring 2025.
Fiona's original degree was in Education and I was a teacher before subsequently training to be a counsellor at the University of Edinburgh. I completed my doctoral dissertation "The Porn Factory: A feminist dystopian inquiry into porn (re)produced worlds" in 2017. On completion of my D.Psych, I was a Research Assistant for the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry whilst seeing clients in a private practice.
Jonathan trained as a counsellor, part-time, at the Isis Centre in Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, completing his MSc in 2001. For ten years, until July 2011, he worked one day a week in the NHS as a counsellor in primary care and, until moving to Edinburgh in September 2013, ran a small private counselling and supervision practice. He originally worked as an English teacher, then subsequently in youth and community work, before moving into staff development and training. He completed his doctorate at Bristol in narrative and life story research in 2008. Jonathan is an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and a member of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry and the Collaborative and Narrative Inquiry Network (CANI-NET).
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