Arts Based Research
Innovation & Knowledge Translation
Innovating how knowledge is shared and how it is understood
What we do
We translate research into compelling artistic and creative forms (visual, digital, performative, and experiential), so that knowledge becomes accessible, engaging, and memorable. Through collaboration with artists, communities, and researchers, we transform evidence into experiences that inspire dialogue, deepen understanding, and spark change. Our work moves research beyond reports and into the world where people can see it, feel it, and connect with it.
Projects
ENRICH Illumination Workshop Evaluations
Our Illumination arts-based workshops invite participants to engage deeply with the inner dynamics that shape how we work, learn, and grow together.
Grounded in experiential creative practices, these sessions support professionals in uncovering the often-hidden elements that influence collaboration, identity, and personal development.
1. Learning Collaboration Through the Arts
Developed within the Illumination stream of ENRICH, Canada’s Health Research Training Platform for perinatal and child health professionals, this 90-minute workshop uses self-reflection, hands-on artmaking, and group creation to explore how personal experiences and values shape collaborative practice. Through guided activities and a final collective performance, participants gain an embodied understanding of what effective collaboration feels like and how to strengthen it in their work.
2. Fear, Failure, and the Creative Process
This session uses artistic exploration to reveal the pressures and anxieties surrounding fear and failure in professional life. Through playful experimentation and shared reflection, participants learn to view failure as a source of possibility, building curiosity, resilience, and comfort with risk.
3. Agility and Adaptation in Research
This session invites participants to explore what it means to be agile in both their professional and personal lives, recognizing how these dimensions intersect in complex, rapidly changing research environments. Through creative, cross-disciplinary engagement, participants build flexibility, adaptive responsiveness, and comfort with change, strengthening their capacity to navigate challenges and foster innovation in perinatal and child health and wellbeing.
Together, these workshops offer creative, transformative learning experiences that help participants understand themselves, connect with others, and reimagine their approaches to professional practice.
Knowledge Translation Artwork
Larry Saves the Canadian Healthcare System
2024
Idealistic young policy analyst Larry's quest to get to the bottom of ER crowding turns into a descent into ever-deeper, zanier, and more bizarre layers of system dysfunction. Can he find a way out?
A research-informed satirical musical.
Music, Lyrics & Screenplay by Sara Kreindler
Directed by Ann Hodges
Publications: Hunter, M. et al. (2024); Kreindler, S. A. et al. (2024)
Art Exhibitions: I’m Still Here
2022
Combining mindfulness practices with expressive art
On behalf of the Centre of Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing and in co-production with an advisory group, this animation was produced in direct response to information needs and misconceptions about frailty identified through a larger research study with older Adults in South Australia.
Exploring Better Aged Care Solutions for our Forgotten Australians
2020
This video shines light on the often overlooked experiences and needs of Forgotten Australians in relation to aged care.
Forgotten Australians are a group of approximately 500,000 people who experienced institutional or other out-of-home care as children and young people in the last century in Australia. Many Forgotten Australians experienced suffering in care, and are now faced with concerns regarding re-institutionalization as they age.
Every Step you Take Matters
2019
What is frailty, and what can you do about it?
On behalf of the Centre of Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing and in co-production with an advisory group, this animation was produced in direct response to information needs and misconceptions about frailty identified through a larger research study with older Adults in South Australia.
A Perfect Simple
2019
Exploring the experience of aging within shifting perspectives of time.
This film was developed in response to metaphors and experiences of older adults derived from an in depth interpretive study exploring their perspectives of frailty and experiences of ageing.
Getting Care Right! The Fundamentals of Care Framework
2019
What does fundamental care mean, and why does it matter? The Fundamentals of Care Framework can help guide health care to ensure that quality, fundamental care is provided to patients every time they encounter the healthcare system.
Beyond Measure
2019
What is frailty, and why does it matter? Older adults share their perspectives of frailty and healthy ageing.
This 14 minute documentary film explores these perspectives while communicating key messages about frailty, as identified through research with the Centre of Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing (National Health and Medical Research Council Funded) and community stakeholder engagement.
Untangled Frailty
2019
The experiences and perspectives of older persons in South Australia related to ageing and frailty.
A short version of a longer educational and awareness documentary for older persons and their carers interested in frailty prevention, management, and healthy ageing.
My Asthma Diary
2016
Evidence based resources for parents of children with asthma, to aid in asthma self management.
Living in Between
2015
A visual exploration of the fluidity of health, and a reflection on life events that hold the potential to threaten concepts of selfhood, namely, the “self as healthy” or the “self as ill.”
Published in
Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
Publications
Archibald, M., & Blines, J. (2021). Metaphors in the making: Illuminating the process of arts-based health research through a case exemplar linking arts-based, qualitative, and quantitative research data. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20. doi: 10.1177/1609406920987954
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