Creative Methodologies for Gender and Sexuality Research with Young People

This workshop introduces creative methodologies for undertaking gender and sexuality research with young people (age 11-18). The workshop will also explore how the artefacts produced by arts-informed methods can be used to attune to, animate and amplify young people’s views, feelings and concerns on matters of relationships, gender, sex and sexuality. Participants will be invited to consider how short films, poems and other creative artefacts can be used to communicate about research with diverse audiences, from policy makers to practitioners.

Participants will be invited to undertake a range of creative methods that will provoke discussions about the challenges and affordances of using arts-informed, creative methods to enable young people to communicate their ‘voice’ with and beyond language (Renold et al. 2023; 2024, Renold and Ivinson 2023, Taylor et al. 2021).

Please see below for an indicative schedule for the day.

After attending the course, students will:

• Develop creative methodological approaches to research with young people;
• Understand how art-informed activities can enable attunement to experience beyond traditional methods;
• Understand the practical, epistemological and ethical challenges creative methods raise, and how to deal with these challenges in practice;
• Be able to make informed decisions about whether and how creative methods can be used in their own doctoral research projects.

Trainer bios:

EJ Renold is Professor of Childhood Studies at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Wales. Inspired by feminist, queer and new materialist posthumanist theory, their research praxis investigates how gender and sexuality come to matter in children’s and young people’s everyday lives across diverse sites and spaces using coproductive and creative methodologies. They collaborate with young people, artists, youth workers, teachers, public health professionals, and policymakers to drive social and political change in the broad field and relationships and sexuality education (see www.agendaonline.co.uk/crush). EJ was awarded the ESRC’s Impact in Society Prize (2018), the Huw Owen Medal for Outstanding Educational Research in Wales (2021) and the American Education Research Association’s Posthuman SIG’s Research Impact award (2025).

Gabrielle Ivinson is Professor of Education & Community, Manchester Metropolitan University.

This training session will be delivered in person only at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Bookings will close at 9am on Thursday 5th June.

As places are limited, please book a place only if you are sure that you will be able to attend.

When booking, you must use your institutional (.ac.uk) email address and complete all fields of the booking form. Your booking will otherwise be cancelled, and you will need to re-book (subject to availability). Thank you for your understanding.