PD report on community driven transformation

Abstract

This report is a reflection on the ongoing process of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) PhD adopting artistic tools and ethnographic methods. It is a reflection on, simultaneously, the fragmentation and conflict encountered within the field - an agricultural context in Belgium undergoing an environmental transition - as well as on the unpredictability and messiness of research situated in-between national and local institutions. How to navigate between not only different worlds of doing PAR juxtaposing the linearity of academia with non-linearity of farming temporalities, but also in a patchworked and fragile environment? In the report, I will argue that translation, seen as a constant effort of revealing patterns and relationalities between disparate realities, could be a helpful design strategy. Building on that, I will discuss three auxiliary methodological approaches - visiting (Arendt, 1992, p. 43), clouding, and accumulating - disclosed by translation and encountered tensions, as well as explore the potential of a translating device - an almanac - combining them together. The report will, thus, disclose different capacities and scales of working within transition processes, reflect on the different ways of doing PD in conflicted contexts, showcase some of the preliminary findings, and discuss the possible next steps.