Workshop: The Art of Creative Inquiry (eBook)

Warren Linds, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. His area of expertise is applying Forum Theatre techniques to address issues of social justice. He is Member of the research team in the Canadian Institutes for Health Research funded project Applied Arts with Health, which works on developing health decision-making with Aboriginal youth in southern Saskatchewan, Canada. He is Co-editor of Playing in a House of Mirrors: Applied Theatre as Reflective Process (Sense Publishers, 2015), Emancipatory practices: Adult/youth engagement for social and environmental justice (Sense Publishers, 2010), and Unfolding bodymind: Exploring possibility through education (Holistic Education Publishers, 2004).

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This book explores tools and techniques for creating the arts with groups. It provides insights into why workshops are such an effective and relevant form of creative practice. Throughout, two experienced practitioners share successful principles and qualities. They also include examples of workshops that explore ways of facilitating creative exploration.The authors believe that underpinning any good workshop practice is an understanding of what constitutes a workshop. This is a process in which the relationship between artist/researcher and participant/audience, maker, and witness is fluid. It extends each individual's abilities and connects doing to learning to inquiring in a single process. The book itself is a dialogue on, and an investigation into, this practice. It fully explores the specificities of workshop practice in relation to how it engages others in arts-based research.Readers learn how workshops involve inquiry into six areas:inquiry into subjects, artistic processes, skills, self, the world, and relationships with others. In the end, this informed investigation helps practitioners to better reflect on their own approaches to arts-based inquiry and research. This, in turn, leads to a better understanding of how readers can use workshops for the maximum benefit of all participants, both individuals and groups.