Co-creation, co-construction and co-production of knowledge: A reflection on employing creative methods with children

Conducting creative and participatory research with children for an improved understanding of their lived experiences has increasingly become the norm. However, critical engagement with creative methods, its practical implications and ethical dilemmas when working with different age groups rarely feature in debates and reflections. This presentation reflects on my experiences employing creative methods with pre-schoolers, primary school children and young people to explore for example their transport experiences, local sense of place or their visions for urban environments in New Zealand and Samoa to reflect on the joys and struggles of the co-creation, co-construction and co-production of knowledge and its ethical dilemmas with children of different ages. I argue that using creative and participatory methods should not be an expectation in all projects, but rather should be negotiated between child and adult researchers. Therefore, the paper concludes that when children of different ages are invited as creative researchers, they should be invited as active participants in their own right.

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Speaker

Christina Ergler

School of Geography, University of Otago, New Zealand

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Christina Ergler is a senior lecturer in Social Geography at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research interests are at the intersection of geography, sociology and public health and centre on how physical, social and symbolic environments shape and are shaped by the way people play, live, age, fall ill and recover in particular places. Her research uses creative, participatory, age- and culturally-appropriate methodologies that acknowledge the expertise of everyone and foster their participation in everyday activities and thus well-being or well-becoming through the research process. For example, she has used photo-voice, participatory video, drawings or various mapping and storytelling activities with children and young people. She has also collaborated with participants on research exhibitions, poetic representations, storyboards and collaborative writing projects.