Abstract

This thesis uses practice-based research to creatively re-present insights about everyday life through the production of artworks in a specific site. The focus of my research has been the workers of Perry Street Mill, Chard. Through building on methods that use the subjective memories of these workers, I have developed the ‘located narrative process’. The ‘located narrative process’ uses oral history as a method of research and co-creation. Traditional methods of research have been used to underpin experiential understandings of a particular place. Through embracing methods from social science and employing them as part of a creative process and using theories from oral history and geography, I have expanded my practice of making artwork, which employs subjective memories and incorporates embodied and experiential approaches. Experience has been the basis for memory throughout this research. Established ways of thinking and knowing about a particular place have been challenged through the new body of knowledge that was produced. This archive of new knowledge is used to produce concepts and themes to inform the creation of my artwork. Therefore, the ‘located narrative process’ is not an end in itself, but a point of departure for the creation of artworks.

This research has employed ‘Framework,’ a method that was developed during the 1980s at the National Centre for Social Research, for analysing qualitative data. Framework yielded an approach for the participants’ shared knowledge to be displayed and thus, provides an archive of collective memory about the particular place. My own thematic preoccupations have informed the creation of artwork; this was achieved by using the ‘located narrative process’ to analyse and organize the narrative content of the interview-based research material. Themes and concepts have been identified through a creative process involving my subjective judgment and used as points of departure for further interpretation and re-presentation. New understandings have been created by the interpretations and re-presentations I have made in response to the alternative way of knowing. This method enables the identification and re-presentation creatively of insights about everyday life in relation to a particular place through the production of artworks.