Engaging with research participants and embracing their opinions is considered a core aspect of social science research. In this regards, more recent attention has focused on the use of participatory visual art practice approaches across the social science disciplines. It is a flexible approach which empowers participants within the research process. My research corresponds to Bagnoli and Clark’s (2010) belief that the researcher may act alongside research participants as a facilitator, helping to build projects via action-oriented practice. Clark et al also show that forms of this type of collaboration vary from limited involvement to engagement with the whole research process (Clark et al, 2009). This view of engaging participants in the core of the research is supported by Kindon et al (2007), who note that 'participatory' is not merely a type of research method, but rather the depth of participant involvement in the whole research process. For me, aesthetic qualities were of little or no consideration in evaluating participants’ data.

Using my own research as an example, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the use of participatory visual art based methods is not just a way to collect data or answer predefined thesis questions, but can actually shape research questions and theses in ways one may not have initially considered. My use of participatory methods (in particular, image based tasks given to participants) has been influenced by reviewing different research methods and choosing a particularly democratic approach to research, one that views participants as direct agents, not objects, in my research.

I will review sets of tools/materials and participatory visual art based activities that I employed in the context of discussion with participants. These materials assist in demonstrating how adopting a creative mixed methods approach and incorporating visual and art-based methods can encourage unconventional ideas and novel thinking.

Specifically, my first year of research focused primarily on the teacher training programme at one of the larger universities in Saudi Arabia, and the use of such participatory activities helped in investigating and identifying layers of experiences not easily put into words. This suggested to me an alternative position from which to explore my research and my research broadened from investigating the teaching programme to a wider perspective, which in turn channeled my PhD in a more intuitive and sociological-relevant direction. Consequently art based participatory activities allowed participants to access different parts of consciousness, evoking responses and as Leavy states, ‘connecting people on emotional and visceral levels, artistic forms of representation facilitate empathy, which is a necessary pre-condition for...building coalitions/community across differences' (2009:14).