The Wonderbox Project: Creative Interventions, Artful Caregiving, and the Impact on Families with Medically Complex Children

Description

The Wonderbox research project was the product of a creative health collaboration between the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, as well as the Childsplay AZ…

The Wonderbox research project was the product of a creative health collaboration between the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, as well as the Childsplay AZ theater in Tempe, Arizona. This ongoing project began in the summer of 2021. It was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and IRB approval was obtained for the project. Each participant signed informed consent documents prior to the start of the survey and the intervention. This research project aimed to explore ways in which stress can be alleviated in parents and caregivers who have medically complex children using creative play and interactive theater interventions. This study used surveys to determine how the Wonderbox activities impacted the perceived stress, well-being, overall family functioning, and quality of life of parents who have medically complex children. This study consisted of parents or caregivers of children between the ages of 6 and 17 with any type of medical complexity who spoke English. There were 31 families who participated in this study. The family APGAR (family functioning), perceived stress scale, quality of life evaluation, and the WHO-5 well-being index were measured before and following the intervention. The quality of life evaluation post-test measure was shown to be statistically significant, and the perceived stress increased but was not statistically significant. The Family APGAR had no change. In qualitative results, only five families reported their results in ClassDojo, and there was no communication between the researchers and the parents of these children. Overall, the study was successful in significantly improving quality of life and caused no harm to the participants in other areas of evaluation. Future studies should consider broadening the size of the population of the next cohort, as well as promoting better communication among these families to obtain more qualitative results.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

The Wonderbox Project: Creative Interventions, Artful Caregiving, and the Impact on Families with Medically Complex Children

Description

The Wonderbox research project was the product of a creative health collaboration between the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, as well as the Childsplay AZ…

The Wonderbox research project was the product of a creative health collaboration between the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, as well as the Childsplay AZ theater in Tempe, Arizona. This ongoing project began in the summer of 2021. It was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and IRB approval was obtained for the project. Each participant signed informed consent documents prior to the start of the survey and the intervention. This research project aimed to explore ways in which stress can be alleviated in parents and caregivers who have medically complex children using creative play and interactive theater interventions. This study used surveys to determine how the Wonderbox activities impacted the perceived stress, well-being, overall family functioning, and quality of life of parents who have medically complex children. This study consisted of parents or caregivers of children between the ages of 6 and 17 with any type of medical complexity who spoke English. There were 31 families who participated in this study. The family APGAR (family functioning), perceived stress scale, quality of life evaluation, and the WHO-5 well-being index were measured before and following the intervention. The quality of life evaluation post-test measure was shown to be statistically significant, and the perceived stress increased but was not statistically significant. The Family APGAR had no change. In qualitative results, only five families reported their results in ClassDojo, and there was no communication between the researchers and the parents of these children. Overall, the study was successful in significantly improving quality of life and caused no harm to the participants in other areas of evaluation. Future studies should consider broadening the size of the population of the next cohort, as well as promoting better communication among these families to obtain more qualitative results.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Arts-based Youth Participatory Action Research: Latinx Performances of Multidimensional Identity and Transformational Resistance

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Description
This seven-month critical performance ethnographic study explores the livedexperiences of Latinx youth artivist-researchers. The data collected through participant observations, arts-based elicitation and semi-structured interviews, artifacts, and analytic memos reveal how Latinx youth utilize artmaking towards transformational resistance. Their participation in…

This seven-month critical performance ethnographic study explores the livedexperiences of Latinx youth artivist-researchers. The data collected through participant observations, arts-based elicitation and semi-structured interviews, artifacts, and analytic memos reveal how Latinx youth utilize artmaking towards transformational resistance. Their participation in an arts-based youth participatory action research project and intergenerational theatre ensemble I call Estrella Theatre (ET) company indicates how art and social justice-driven inquiry produce powerful benefits towards positive youth development; a transformational pedagogy that fosters critical consciousness, civic engagement, and identity construction. To illustrate these distinct yet intertwined processes, I composed an ethnodrama to show how Latinx youth in the U.S. embody transformational resistance in their lives as they traverse school, home, and community spaces. The purpose of the play is to utilize the experiences of the participants to spark critical dialogue and generate knowledge to help society understand the experiences of Latinx youth in K-12 schooling and challenge majoritarian narratives by showcasing how they combine art, research, and social justice towards educational leadership.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Developing a BIPOC-Centered Equity Performance Coalition at an Arts College: An Autoethnography

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Description
Predominantly White arts colleges in the United States, like many other institutions around the country, need equitable leadership frameworks that center Black and Brown students. This project is a response to that demand. The purpose of this dissertation is to…

Predominantly White arts colleges in the United States, like many other institutions around the country, need equitable leadership frameworks that center Black and Brown students. This project is a response to that demand. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a BIPOC equity coalition in an Arts college at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). The choice to utilize an autoethnographic research design was based on the researcher’s lifelong work in social justice and equity. Additionally, the choice to utilize Black-centered storytelling was due to the researcher’s identity as a Black male who has a company devoted to social justice activism. The research questions for this dissertation are: 1) How does one develop a diverse equity coalition that is BIPOC-centered within a Predominantly White arts college? and 2) What leadership roles must be in place in order to develop a diverse equity coalition that is BIPOC-centered, within a Predominantly White arts college? The data sources for this dissertation are meeting notes, Facebook call for action, letter of demand, and reflective journal process. The data from this year-long experience was analyzed to describe the steps needed to develop a BIPOC equity coalition. The steps included a call to action on social media, listening sessions, formation of the coalition, development of guiding principles, and action steps taken throughout the academic year. Additionally, data revealed that roles such as having a seat at the table with administrators, and having the power of a job and a title within the arts school influenced the success of the coalition’s actions throughout the academic year. The first three chapters of the dissertation present the theoretical frameworks supporting the equity coalition. Chapter 4 and 5 presents findings and answers to research question 1 and 2.
Date Created
2021
Agent

Identity spectrums, analytic adolescents, and gays in "space!: a qualitative investigation of youth queer narrative reception

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Description
This research study examines the interaction between youth queer narratives and young people through examining my core research question, How do young people engage, interpret, and respond to queer narratives? Applying a feminist narrative analysis to examine the qualitative…

This research study examines the interaction between youth queer narratives and young people through examining my core research question, How do young people engage, interpret, and respond to queer narratives? Applying a feminist narrative analysis to examine the qualitative data, I propose a methodological research shift where the voices of youth are valued as content experts; an artistic shift that moves content-creation away from a top down traditional media model and towards a youth-centered new media approach for art making; an aesthetic shift away from over-used stereotypes, tropes, and stale representations and instead innovate to represent intersectional, spectrum-based diversity of the LGBTQ+ experience.

This qualitative research study utilizes questionnaires, focus groups, and case study interviews, to engage adolescent perceptions of queer narratives. The youth, ranging in ages from 15 to 18 years old and living in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area, explore and examine LGBTQ+ themes, characters, plots in traditional and new media.

My dissertation examines youth interactions with queer narratives through three chapters. These address themes of: character, identity, and representation; plot and the search for accuracy; and the symbiotic exchange between narrative and community. Throughout the dissertation, young people analyze narratives, reflect on their own lives, and envision the future of youth queer narrative. The youth describe a move away from traditional media and towards new media platforms with user-created content, social network interaction, and the sharing of common experiences with peers. Finally, I examine the implications of both the research findings and the methodology on the future of youth-engaged qualitative research, as well as the performing arts.
Date Created
2018
Agent

Mobilizing hope: an applied drama approach toward building protective factors in behavioral health

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Description
The purpose of this mixed methods case study was to evaluate a dramatic arts curriculum focused on building protective factors including resiliency, cognitive flexibility, self-efficacy, and hope in eight to ten adolescent male sex offenders undergoing treatment at a residential…

The purpose of this mixed methods case study was to evaluate a dramatic arts curriculum focused on building protective factors including resiliency, cognitive flexibility, self-efficacy, and hope in eight to ten adolescent male sex offenders undergoing treatment at a residential behavioral health facility in Mesa, Arizona. The impetus for this research was suicide prevention efforts. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 15-24 in the United States (CDC 2013), and prevention efforts demand complex approaches targeting major risk factors like lack of belonging and hopelessness. Arts-based prevention efforts have shown promise for building pro-social preventative factors.
Date Created
2018
Agent

Radical welcome in youth performance spaces on Chicago's south side: the child as hungry, the child as village, the child as visible

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Description
My project maps assets of welcome in the built environment in youth performing arts spaces. What signifiers reveal how a physical space conceptualizes the child, reflects professed theological claims, and cues youth to practice ownership and experience belonging? I explore…

My project maps assets of welcome in the built environment in youth performing arts spaces. What signifiers reveal how a physical space conceptualizes the child, reflects professed theological claims, and cues youth to practice ownership and experience belonging? I explore the cultural capital that emerges from the sites and I assert theological implications of the findings. Through mixed qualitative, quantitative, and arts-based methods, I employ asset-based and cultural mapping tools to collect data. I parse theories of space, race, and capital. Half of the ten sites are faith-based; others make room for practices that participants bring to the table. Therefore, I discuss theologies and theories about racialized, religious, public, and arts spaces. My research shows that one ethnographic task for the arts groups is unearthing and embedding neighborhood legacy. I source fifty-six written youth questionnaires, forty youth in focus groups, staff questionnaires, parent interviews, and observations across fourteen months at ten sites. Interpreting the data required that I reconceive multiple terms, including “youth dedicated,” “partnership,” and art itself. The research codes spatial, relational, economic, temporal, and comfort-level assets. Observed assets include strategies for physical safety, gender inclusivity, literary agility, entrepreneurship, advocacy, and healing. Analyzing data showed the sites as conceptualizing the child in three change-making areas: the Child as Hungry, the Child as Village, and the Child as Visible. The Child as Hungry emerged because participants self-report myriad “feeding” physically, spiritually, and artistically at each site. Youth participants at each site maintain a Village presence, and each site offers a manner of gathering space that signifies Village responsibility. Each site carves space to witness the child, contrastingly with other spheres—so much so that being a Visible Child becomes a craft itself, added alongside the fine art. Child theology is the primary theoretical lens that I use to contribute to and intersect with performance studies theory, critical race theory, child drama, and childhood studies.
Date Created
2018
Agent

Translanguaging in the borderlands: language function in theatre for young audiences written in Spanish and English in the United States

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Description
In the United States, we tend to understand linguistic systems as separate and autonomous, and by this understanding, bilinguals are people who speak two different languages and switch between them.  This understanding of bilingualism, however, does not reflect the reality…

In the United States, we tend to understand linguistic systems as separate and autonomous, and by this understanding, bilinguals are people who speak two different languages and switch between them.  This understanding of bilingualism, however, does not reflect the reality of the way many bilinguals use language.  Rather than “code-switch” between two languages, sociolinguists posit that many bilinguals understand their language as a single linguistic system, and choose different elements of that system in different situations, a process termed, “translanguaging.” Translanguaging provides an alternative framework for examining bilingual language as an ideological system in plays, particularly plays which use translanguaged dialogue to describe the experiences of young people who dwell on and cross borders, a category of plays I term, “Border Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA).” This descriptive study utilizes grounded theory and close reading theoretically grounded in border studies and sociolinguistic theory to determine what roles Spanish and English play in Border TYA as autonomous systems, and as pieces of a new, translanguaged system.   Playwrights of Border TYA u translanguaging as a structural metaphor for cultural negotiation to examine identity, belonging, and borders.  Translanguaging provides subaltern characters a process for communicating their experiences, examining their identities, and describing encounters with borders in their own unique linguistic system. Border TYA, however, does not exclusively translanguage.  Border TYA also incorporates monolingual dialogue and translation, and in these instances the languages, Spanish and English, function autonomously as tools for teaching audience members to recognize vocabulary and cultural experience.
Date Created
2017
Agent

The encyclopedia show: community-based performance in pursuit of classroom interdisciplinarity

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Description
In May 2014, The Encyclopedia Show: Chicago performed its last volume. Like all others before, the Show was a collection of performances devised by artists, musicians, poets and playwrights all performing various subtopics surrounding a central theme, taken…

In May 2014, The Encyclopedia Show: Chicago performed its last volume. Like all others before, the Show was a collection of performances devised by artists, musicians, poets and playwrights all performing various subtopics surrounding a central theme, taken from “an actual Encyclopedia.” The final show was Volume 56 for Chicago; the founding city ended their six year run with an amassed body of work exploring topics ranging from Wyoming to Alan Turing, Serial Killers to Vice Presidents.

Perhaps more impressive than the monthly performance event in Chicago is the fact that the show has been “franchised” to organizers and performers in at least seventeen cities. Franchise agreements mandated that for at least the first year of performance, topics were to follow Chicago’s schedule, thus creating an archive of Shows around the world, each that started with Bears, moved to The Moon, onto Visible Spectrum of Color, and so on.

Now that the Chicago show has ended, I wonder what will happen to the innovative format for community performance that has reached thousands of audience members and inspired hundreds of individual performances across the globe in a six-year period.

This project, like much of my own work, has two aims: first, to provide the first substantive history of The Encyclopedia Show for archival purposes; and second, to explore whether this format can be used to achieve the goals of “interdisciplinarity” in the classroom. In an effort to honor my own interests in multiple academic disciplines and in an attempt to capture the structural and performative “feel” of an Encyclopedia Show, this dissertation takes the shape of an actual Encyclopedia Show. The overarching topic of this “show” is: Michelle Hill: The Doctoral Process. In an actual Encyclopedia Show, subtopics would work to explore multiple perspectives and narratives encompassed by the central topic. As such, my “subtopics” are devoted to the roles I have played throughout my doctoral process: historian, academic, teacher. A fourth role, performer, works to transition between the sections and further create the feel of a “breakage” from a more traditional dissertation.
Date Created
2017
Agent

Girl-becomings: girls theorizing girlhood through visual art, theatre, and digital communications

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Description
Using arts-informed ethnographic approaches, theatrical techniques and a feminist/performance studies lens, this study analyzes the construction of US girlhood from the perspective of girls ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen by examining their original artistic creations and performances. Placing…

Using arts-informed ethnographic approaches, theatrical techniques and a feminist/performance studies lens, this study analyzes the construction of US girlhood from the perspective of girls ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen by examining their original artistic creations and performances. Placing the artifacts of girl-created culture and the girls' representations, which I view as a performative practice, at the heart of my study, I connect girlhood studies to Butler's gender performance theories and to the larger field of performance studies. Rather than strictly analyzing these original works myself, I involve the girl participants as co-theorists in the analysis of the resulting artistic creations as a performance of girlhood. Through our theory building sessions, we aim to discover a nuanced understanding of girlhood and how gender identity can be performed by adolescent girls, as well as how artistic and theatrical practices can serve to assist youth in exploring complex issues. The adolescent female participants serve as active writers and performers of girlhood and through their writing and performances demonstrate their understanding of what it means to be a girl in contemporary US society. In viewing the girls as theorists, I demonstrate their capabilities while honoring their experiences and knowledge, an approach I believe should be more often employed in academia and in everyday life. Specifically, my study's central research question asks: how do US girls consume mass media representations of girlhood and reproduce or subvert these representations? In what ways do girls perform their understandings of their own identities and what it means to be a girl in contemporary US society through their creations of original art and literature, live theatrical pieces, and digital cultural practices? These works include theatrical performances, creative writing, self-portrait sculptures, and blogs/journals. Additionally, I conduct and analyze both solo and group interviews. I assert the importance of creative space and theatrical/artistic practices as tools with which girls can examine and challenge girlhood and gender discourses.
Date Created
2014
Agent
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