# Arts-based example 1
Imagine Ava, Sophia and Milo working in your community with you focusing on the lived experiences of children and young people living in a suburb. Your interest being their agency in public service and answering following question: How do children and young people experience social life, healthcare and youth service in this district? Together you are finding a very practical context where and how to inquire what is meaningful for children and young people. For example, you might start with inquiring what is a burning issue that worries children and young people, and alongside this you might be interested in their dreams related to services designed for them.

After finding a practical burning question Ava, Sophia, Milo a group of young pupils from the same school and you would sit together to imitate and illustrate, visualize, dramatize service situations and care practices ‘as is’, as young people (one of them is Noah) have experienced it. You would have several shoots around issue as it is experienced with a playful mode and slowly get towards more complex service situation discussing what causes the perplexity in them. You would be using arts-based illustrating as a communicative tool.

Rather than asking Noah, how did you think in that perplexed care situation you would be asking *Noah, what do you think this role character in this perplexed situation is thinking?* You could also investigate a perplexed situation from different points of view. By this we mean that the same specific situation would be interpreted from a caretaker, children, parents, civic officer´s role or any other person who is involved in that situation.

You might wonder: *What arts-based approach brings to the setting*. For example, with the help of visual props – design specific to artful inquiry or a collection of images you have gathered from art-history books - you may organise a space for dialogical ideation. Following images are called Theatrical Images (following photos are examples of them) and Ava has been using them in inquiring people’s emotions, tensions, hopes and needs.




Photos are taken by photographer Maiju Saari, artistic design by Anne Pässilä, graphic design Laura Mellanen, actors Mari KanervaNiemi, Minna Partanen and Heikki Hagman.

Ava: *Arts link the imaginations and emotions into practices, and that would let us to start to create scenarios, which could be described ‘as if’ situations. ‘As if’ is linked to imaginative thinking and it allows us to sense how young people would like the health , social and youth care services to be felt like*.

Milo: *Isn´t it about empathy?*

Ava: *It can be that too. Theater director Augusto Boal ´s (1995; 1979/2000) life work in a theater of oppressed was fundamentally based on building social justice and empathy (in a context of morality and ethics when it is sitting next to criticality) in society. Also psychiatrist, psychosociologist, and educator Jacob Leavy Moreno´s (1846; ) life work has psychosociolistic approach to empathy building as well as various forms of art therapy. For example drama therapist Carl Rogers (1942; 1980) and Sue Jennings (2000 ) had a significant influence in the field of drama education when working in their own humanistic way in the field of empathy using gestalt in transforming and gaining new awareness.*

Sophia: *Empathy is one core function of inquiry where you focus on appreciation. I feel that it is an access to polyphony. I recall how we used visual and storytelling methods in the first stage of planning where we were mapping the emotional landscapes of children’s neighborhoods. We used two fictional characters as a pretext for storytelling when asking children to create a loving friend (a character) to Samantha Jänis and WOW-GRETA-WOW.*

Samantha Jänis is friendly, super curious about science, can not always remember is 2+2 a carrot or something else


WOW-GRETA-WOW has lot of super powers and loves nature, forest and butterflies, especially golden butterflies


This is a task card tested in March in Lahti, Finland with an international urban studies program.

Samantha Jänis and WOW-Greta-WOW are examples of visual and fictional characters which can be used during artful inquiry, sketches done by Anne Pässilä, photos Antti Knutas.

Milo: *Yes, do you remember Ilona, one of the participants? She drew so intensively and by drawing story told what kind of person is a loving friend and what kind of place is safe and what makes the spaces. *

Milo, Ava and Sophia used Ilona´s as well as other children’s drawings as an artefact to talk about their emotions related to neighborhood.


Ilona´s drawing about safe place where she would take Samantha Jänis (where Samantha would feel good and inspired).

Pretext of sharing experiences started with safe places and with the help of fictional characters they could also talk with Ilona what places she founds unsafe, these inquiries were made using aesthetic distancing: “*Ilona would you tell which places Samantha Jänis does not want to go in this place you drow which Samantha Jänis finds unsafe*?” Then Ilona started to tell what Samantha Jänis is afraid, she said that adults behind R-kioski (corner shop) are behaving oddly, they are very loud and move unpredictably, she also explains that she drew them behind R-kioski because she would then not to be there, she also said that there is no worries because she is always with her granny or mother over there, and granny is powerful, no one dares to behave badly when she is around. Sophia knew that often some adults gathered around there to drink beer and socialize because they did not have money to go to the nearby pub.

All these conversations with children were audio recorded and through them Sophia, Milo and Ava designed an emotional map of the area.


This is a task card where fictional character Samantha Jänis is bounding to hopefull future scenarios, it can be used as a playfull roadmap.

The road map can be used in the next stage of planning with city officers interested in citizens – specifically children - lived experiences about safety.