{"id":682,"date":"2019-03-25T19:07:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T19:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/transforming-stories\/?p=682"},"modified":"2019-06-28T13:22:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T17:22:14","slug":"on-methods-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/transforming-stories\/2019\/03\/25\/on-methods-and\/","title":{"rendered":"Promising privacy\u2014while performing publicly"},"content":{"rendered":"
As a community partnership research project, a goal of Transforming Stories, Driving Change <\/em>is to explore how performance can help us understand our world and collectively imagine ways it might be different. This blog is our way of extending this collective imagining to you. With it we reflect on experiences within the project and to make visible some of the methods we engage, and the questions we grapple with.<\/pre>\n
At a recent presentation to the McMaster Research Ethics Board (MREB), Chris Sinding<\/a>, Catherine Graham<\/a>, and I (Helene Vosters) had an opportunity to speak about some of the particular ethical concerns performance-based researchers grapple with and the methodological approaches we use to address them. One of the key ethical questions we grapple with at Transforming Stories<\/em> is the issue of publicness. In Canada, the federal\u00a0Tri-Council Policy Statement of Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans<\/em><\/a>\u00a0has developed policies that govern the protection of individual research participants\u2019 privacy and autonomy, including most importantly guidelines concerning informed consent and confidentiality. Institutional-level review boards, whose mandate is to review the ethics all university-based research projects involving human participants, ensure these policies are applied in all research conducted at their university. The ethics of a public-oriented and participative approach to research that performance-based research projects like\u00a0Transforming Stories<\/em> espouse can be difficult for these boards to evaluate.<\/p>\n
Simply put, is it possible, or even desirable, to protect people\u2019s identities when the purpose of the research is to find effective ways for people to engage in public speech?<\/em><\/p>\n
In text-based research projects, \u201cprotecting\u201d the anonymity of community-based research participants is a relatively straightforward task. With arts-based research, on the other hand, the identity of the participant\/creator cannot always be completely hidden, since the source of the knowledge and the vehicle for disseminating it through performance are one and the same. In other words, when participants perform, they are visible\u2014this is the nature of performance. In fact, this is also highly desirable to many of our community partners and participants.<\/p>\n
How then, do performance-based research project protect participants from invasions into their privacy? Are there ways that the public identity of research participants can be known without intruding on their private lives? <\/em><\/p>\n
At Transforming Stories<\/em> we recognize that different stages of the performance creation process demand different levels of confidentiality. For example, the workshop process is open only to participants and members of the research team. It is a collective space, but it is not<\/em> a public space. The workshops are a place to try things and then collectively decide <\/em>what will become public.<\/p>\n
In contrast with the workshop as a private space, at Transforming Stories<\/em> performances members of the public are invited to connect with the creators of the artistic works and will know something about their identities. Measures are taken, however, to direct audiences attention so that they do not intrude into the participants\u2019 private lives.<\/p>\n
At performances, we use a number of aesthetic tools to frame the presentation as being a public expression of opinion and experiential community-based knowledge\u2014not personal stories.<\/p>\n