Co-designing, co-experiencing, co-authoring: blurring the lines in participatory research

Taking the concept of lace as a networked act involving textile knowledge and skills as well as a practice embodied within Nottingham culture, this paper offers an analysis of a participatory research project designed to engage mature women in the process of co-creating a series of fashion artefacts. Fashion and textile practitioners, Sadkowska and Townsend, have undertaken collaborative research (Sadkowska 2016; Townsend et al. 2016) to understand mature individuals’ experiences of clothing, by identifying new methods of capturing and interpreting embodied wearing practices that can be integrated within the creative research and design process. They offer their reflections on this co-design project based on group activities where dress and textile ‘objects’ become sites for interaction and knowledge exchange. While Goode’s research profile (Goode 2016) displays similar interests, her narrative derives from the perspective of a project participant who has become ‘an active and co-creative’ actor. Her reflection focuses on the increased sense of agency and validation which challenges dominant discourses on ageing based on deterioration and disappearance (Twigg 2013). Underpinned by Tanggaard’s (2013) notion of “the socio-materiality of creativity”, and Skjold’s (2015) concept of the “dress object” the authors reflect on the different experiences that arise in and via the embodied, experiential and participatory research processes. Consequently, the lines between the researchers and the research participants and modes of production and consumption blur as the warp and weft of each narrative becomes temporarily conjoined.

References:
GOODE, J. (2016). Fashioning the Sixties: fashioning narratives of older women. Ageing and Society, pp. 1–21
TANGGAARDE, L. (2015). Socio-materiality of Creativity, Keynote at EKSIG 2015, Tangible Means, Design School Kolding, Denmark 25-26 November, EKSIG2015 Proceedings pdf, p.10.
SKJOLD, E. (2015). Making Sense of Dress: On sensory perspectives of wardrobe research, EKSIG 2015, Tangible Means, Design School Kolding, Denmark 25-26 November, EKSIG2015 Proceedings pdf, pp 298-310.
TOWNSEND, K., SADKOWSKA, A., and SISSONS J. (2016). Emotional Fit: Developing a new fashion design methodology for mature women. Design Research Society (DRS) Future-Focused Thinking Conference. 27-30 June 2016, Brighton, UK. [full paper available at: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ca3eafe4b05bb65abd54ff/t/5749894960b5e9b0a773c19a/1464437069936/422+Townsend.pdf]
TWIGG, J. (2013). Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life. London: Bloomsbury.
SADKOWSKA, A. (2016). Arts- Informed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Understanding older men’s experiences of ageing through the lens of fashion and clothing. Unpublished PhD thesis, Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University, UK.