Working in the Key of Collaboration: Songwriting and Alternative Ethnography as Research Practice

Abstract

Songwriting offers responses to adversity one may experience when faced with social or environmental change. I propose a way of working that engages with such feelings as grief or hopelessness through collaborative songwriting. Steps in a suggested framework enable participants to co-write lyrics and melody, although participants may not have previous songwriting experience. I intend that this suggested framework may serve as a resource for other artists or arts-based scholars. I then introduce a Question-and-Answer template to further writing about processes of fieldwork encounters. In adapted form, this may be useful for other artists or scholars. Songwriting can be a form of analysis-in-the-making-moment, and songs can be analytical amalgamations of fieldwork and songwriting encounters. Released into the world, they may become hybrid analytical artifacts that communicate research in novel ways. I suggest such research outcomes can add to a conversation around living with repercussions of the climate and bio-diversity crises.