Are we storytellers and artist-scientists?

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science.
—Albert Einstein

I love coming a cross an inspirational article and today it was Intuition and Creativity: A Pas de Deux
for Qualitative Researchers by Valerie J. Janesick of Roosevelt University (Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 7 Number 5, 2001 531-540) (LINK)


At the heart of her argument is , I am trying to shift the conversation about qualitative research methodology and design from the “McDonaldization” or “Disneyfication” of method and design to an understanding of the intuitive and the creative.


Technique is one thing but if we are really going to discover something novel we need to go beyond the technique and be creative....


Heres another great one...Creativity within Qualitative Research on Families: New Ideas for Old Methods by Sharon A. Deacon ⁺The Qualitative Report, Volume 4, Numbers 3 & 4, March, 2000 (LINK)

She puts forwards art, poetry, timelines, writing exercises, photo projects to gather data..

Here is an excerpt..

Writing Exercises

When we think of using writing as a method of qualitative research, we usually think of open-ended questions on a survey. However, there are other writing activities researchers can use that are not ordinary or monotonous to gather information from participants. Researchers can ask participants to keep journals of their daily activities or feelings, and then use these journals as one way to understand and describe participants' and their lives (Symon, 1998). Researchers can also request that participants keep logs of certain activities, memories, or dreams as a way to gather information.
Incomplete prompts are words or beginnings of sentences or stories ("prompts") that researchers can ask participants to finish with their own ideas. With incomplete sentences, researchers ask participants to fill in their thoughts for a list of unfinished sentences that relate to the topic of study. For example, "When I was in the hospital, I felt. . ."; "The hardest time in my life was. . ."; "The turning point was when. . .". Researchers can also give participants topics to write on or titles for stories and then ask participants to use their creative writing skills to write the story. In studying rural farm families, a researcher might ask the family to write a story on "The challenges of farm life that most people never realize." Or, to study reactions to a devastating flood, a researcher might ask participants to tell a story titled, "Lessons for Recovering." Finally, researchers can ask participants to write about headlines in newspapers that reflect current events ("The Future Direction of Our Community" , "One Family's Reaction to the Tragedy"), or classified ads for specific desires ("Perfect Parent Wanted: Qualifications:. . .", "Perfect Job. . .", etc.). 


This paper is chockers full of practical ideas