Creative Journaling for Researcher Wellbeing and Research Practice
Training Organisation: Magnetic Ideals
Delivery: Online, one full day
Programme Description:
This course will address how we can externalise inner thoughts through the practice of regular creative journaling. In this context, a journal can be viewed as a flexible instrument of personal, academic and creative insights. The course will explore how journaling informs the mapping of self and research and how this can be an intuitive, reflexive experience based on affect and feelings as well as facts, evidence, and being a reflexive means of inward reflection. Studies have shown that reflective journaling aids in developing critical thinking skills, reducing anxiety and improving memory. This is true of both faculty members and students.
Keeping a journal can document the research process and be used as a reference for creative practitioners, form a key evidence base for participatory researchers, and help to decode and recode the process of learning on the academic journey. Effective journaling helps the researcher validate creative and practical praxis and product. Journaling is not simply a ‘database’ but a means to validate creative, practice and observation-based research. It can be a valid tool in establishing scholarly contribution to knowledge. It is a truly interdisciplinary tool valuable in relation to any practical activity that must generate knowledge despite uncertain outcomes.
We will explore how simple, tactile art materials used in journaling can open sensory awareness, emotional expression, and creative exploration. Participants do not have to be skilled in drawing or painting to attend the course, materials and guidance wil be provided. Exploring a range of illustration and type techniques inspired by artists such as John Vernon Lord and Yumi Sakugawa, participants will respond to research or personal experiences.
Learning these creative journalling skills creates a space to explore and develop ideas. This can be useful in practice-based PhDs for documenting the creative process and also for demonstrating progress for upgrades and supervision meetings.
This session will be dual facilitated, and all attendees will receive a journal of their own with which to carry on their practice after the session. During the session, researchers will be given the chance to respond to their own research while also collaborating with each other on illustration techniques and reflecting on experiences and challenges within the research process.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course researchers will be able to:
Recognise the positive impact of journaling practice on critical thinking, creativity and research validation
Apply creative techniques to the mapping of both self and research
Use a range of illustration techniques and tools in journaling
Explore their research ideas in a creative form
How to use regular journaling practice to help with mental wellbeing
Have an action plan of how to apply this in their research practice