Beyond Consent Forms: Why C.O.I.N. Is Needed in Arts-Based Research

Written by Louisa

I have recently been honoured to join the Curators of Inclusion network, led by artist and researcher Doll. This new network aims to improve curatorial practice across a range of fields, promoting equitable representation and challenging narrow ideas of expertise. For researchers working in academia, particularly within the social sciences and psychology, this raises an important question: why might this kind of network be necessary? This blog post offers some reflections from my own research journey to help situate why this network matters.

My background spans the arts, the third sector, and psychology, and during my PhD these strands naturally came together. I used creative, arts-based methods to explore peoples lived experiences of mental distress. This approach brought many clear benefits. Arts-based methods allowed participants to express themselves in alternative, non-verbal ways, with artworks often holding multiple meanings at once in ways that spoken language cannot. They also provided a safer way to explore highly emotive topics, offering indirect representations of experiences that helped reduce some of the emotional risk involved. Importantly, using artworks created by participants helped shift the balance of power within qualitative research, enabling participants to lead conversations rather than being directed by a researcher’s questions. The result of this for me as a researcher was rich insights into lived experiences that I could not get from verbal conversations alone. However, the experience also revealed challenges of utilising artworks created by research participants. It was through this process that I began to recognise the limits of existing academic practices when working with artworks.

One of the main challenges I encountered when working with participants’ artworks related to consent. Within academic research, the process of ensuring work is conducted ethically is often rigorous and highly regulated. Before approaching participants, I went through an extensive ethics application and interview process, designed to ensure that consent was fully informed and clearly documented. This included gaining consent for participation, for the use of interview material, and, in my case, for the use of artworks in future analysis, publications, presentations, and teaching. Like many researchers, I relied on written consent forms, outlining these uses in advance and emphasising participants’ right to withdraw. At the time, this felt thorough and standard, and I gave it little further thought.

However, as my research progressed, and as I became more embedded in the meanings and emotional weight these artworks held for people living with mental distress, I began to question whether this approach was enough. This discomfort became particularly clear at the end of my research when I created a poster of my findings that combined participants’ artworks and quotes.  Although I had consent to use the material anonymously, I worried about how participants might feel seeing their artwork displayed in this way. Even without names, artworks can be recognisable through style, symbolism, or shared context, potentially making individuals identifiable. Fortunately, I had arranged to visit a charity partner to present this poster to participants before presenting it in a public conference setting. Returning to participants before wider dissemination allowed space for dialogue, renewed consent and opportunities for withdrawing consent. Thankfully, my participants were pleased and interested in the poster, and it created more engaging conversations. Some participants like seeing their work printed for display which was reassuring. However, this opportunity for ‘reconsent’ was inadvertent but turned out to be essential. This practice is far from routine in academia, but it is now a step I see as ethically important.

Since completing my PhD, I have begun publishing this work and including participants’ artworks within academic publications. While this is done anonymously and with written informed consent, I have lost contact with some participants and am no longer able to engage in the kind of ongoing, relational consent that I now see as ideal. In these cases, I have had to rely on the consent given at the time of participation in order to move forward with publication. This reflects a broader tension within academic research, where long timelines and fragmented dissemination processes can make ongoing consent difficult, even when researchers are acting with care and good intent. These kinds of dilemmas, without easy solutions, are precisely why shared reflection and learning within an inclusive curators’ network feels so necessary.

Within academia, and particularly within the social sciences such as psychology, there has been a growing interest in arts-based research methods over recent decades. While this represents an important step towards challenging more traditional ideas about knowledge production in these fields, it also requires us to move forward carefully in practice. Using the arts in research often opens up alternative forms of dissemination, such as exhibitions, film screenings, performances, or other public-facing events. These moments of sharing are powerful, but they also raise complex ethical questions. This is where the C.O.I.N. network feels especially valuable. By bringing together voices and expertise from across disciplines and lived experience, the network helps researchers think more carefully about how creative work is curated, contextualised, and shared. Through my involvement, I have already been able to develop my own practice in ways that more clearly centre participants’ voices and experiences when working with artworks.

If you are a researcher working with creative methods or considering using artworks in your research or dissemination, I would strongly encourage you to engage with the C.O.I.N. network. It offers a supportive space to learn, reflect, and collaborate with others who are committed to ethical, inclusive, and artist-centred practices, and to developing better ways of working together across disciplines.