MAGNIFICENT RUBBISH: EEN ARTISTIEK GEÏNSPIREERD ONDERZOEKSPROJECT ALS EEN VORM VAN MAATSCHAPPELIJK GEËNGAGEERDE PEDAGOGIEK

‘Magnificent Rubbish’ is an arts-informed research project conducted in a former industrial area on the outskirts of a Belgian city that is now part of a prestigious urban development project. Participating partners in the project were youngsters for whom the connection with school and work appears less evident, researchers, artists and youth workers from a local centre of expertise. The co-creative project invited youngsters to rethink their relationship with the changing city area. They walked and engaged with the many skins of the city (Howes, Morgan, Radice, & Szanto, 2013), exploring surfaces, bumps, scrapes, scars, gaps, and graffiti in this neighbourhood. Photographs, sound recordings and artefacts collected during the walks were gathered and re-assembled in upcycling art workshops. This culminated eventually in a public exhibition. In this article, we argue that promoting a human-centred ethics of research could be questioned in the context of a research experiment grounded in a dwelling with things, places, old and new artefacts. It is in the entanglement of all these elements that a new research ethos was found and formed as a response-able pedagogy.