LABRC Summer School in Arts-Based Research 2026:
Knowing Through Image, Language, and the Living Psyche

Organized by: London Arts-Based Research Centre Methods

Where: In-person, Birkbeck, University of London
When: Five days from July 20-24
Tutors:  Led by LABRC faculty and guest writers/scholars
Fees: £495 (LABRC Members -15%)

Applications deadline: April 15, 2026

Overview

In many research traditions, knowledge is expected to arrive through analysis, argument, and explanation. Arts-based research begins from a different premise: that image, story, symbol, and embodied experience can also generate knowledge.

This intensive five-day summer school offers an immersive introduction to arts-based research (ABR) as both method and practice. Through a series of workshops integrating visual art, writing, movement, and depth-psychological reflection, participants will explore how creativity itself can become a form of inquiry.

Combining theory and practice, participants will learn how to design and conduct arts-based projects that embody research questions through image, symbol, story, and form. We will explore how creative methods can open new pathways to understanding—through writing, visual work, poetry, movement, and dialogue. Each day focuses on different aspects of the creative process, culminating in a shared showcase of works-in-progress.

The programme welcomes creatives, scholars, graduate students, educators, and reflective practitioners who wish to deepen their engagement with creative inquiry as a transformative mode of knowing.

Working within a small and transdisciplinary group, participants will develop their own creative research approaches while engaging with the rich cultural landscape of London through museum visits, walking conversations, and informal gatherings.

The summer school offers not only innovative arts-based methods by leading educators, but also a rare opportunity to think, create, and reflect with others who share a curiosity about how knowledge might emerge through art.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

✅ Understand the principles and methodologies of arts-based and transdisciplinary research.

✅ Develop creative inquiry methods integrating art, psychology, and personal narrative.

✅ Experience symbolic, imaginal, and embodied ways of knowing.

✅ Produce a creative artefact or reflective piece grounded in ABR principles.

✅ Join an international community of artist-researchers through the LABRC network.

 Programme Outline

Each day combines theoretical framing, guided creative practice, reflective dialogue, and integration.

What You Will Explore

• Arts-based research theory and methodology

• Narrative inquiry and depth storytelling

• Poetry as a mode of research

• Image-work and symbolic inquiry

• Embodied practices and integrative reflection

Programme Highlights

✨ Workshops with leading creatives and scholars

✨ Museum visits and walking conversations in London

✨ Creative practice and reflective dialogue

✨ A closing showcase of works-in-progress

✨ Networking with an international community of artist-researchers

Who Should Attend

• Artists and creative practitioners

• Graduate students and early-career researchers

• Scholars exploring creative methodologies

• Therapists, coaches, and reflective practitioners

• Writers and educators interested in imagination and symbol

No previous experience in arts-based research is required.

Professional Development

Participation may contribute to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements.

Participants leave the summer school with:

✔ New creative research methods

✔ A developing arts-based project

✔ Connections with an international network of artist-researchers

Please fill out the application form here by April 15, 2026. For further queries, please email us at info@labrcmethods.ac.uk

Application form: https://forms.gle/vNVnCTwWwzWEaLULA

Your tutors and workshops:

Roula-Maria Dib: Foundations of Arts-Based Research

Arts-Based Research Theory: Image, Epistemology, and the Imaginal

The week opens with an introduction to arts-based research as both methodology and ontology. Drawing on depth psychology, poetic inquiry, and transdisciplinary research traditions, participants will explore:

• What does it mean to know through art?
• The imaginal realm as epistemic space
• Ekphrasis, symbol, and transmedial inquiry
• Designing research through creative process

Participants will begin shaping their own inquiry questions through image and reflective writing.

Roula-Maria Dib, PhD, FRSA is a scholar, poet, and arts-based researcher whose work explores the intersections of literature, depth psychology, mythology, and creative inquiry. She is the founding director of the London Arts-Based Research Centre (LABRC) and Editor-in-Chief of Indelible, a journal dedicated to cross-disciplinary creative and scholarly expression.

Roula’s research focuses on poetic inquiry, ekphrasis, and the imaginal dimensions of knowledge, examining how image, metaphor, and artistic practice can function as modes of research and understanding. She is the author of Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020), shortlisted for the International Association for Jungian Studies Book Awards, and the poetry collection Simply Being (Chiron Publications, 2021). She has also contributed to Patricia Leavy’s Handbook of Arts-Based Research.

A recipient of the British Council Alumni Award for Culture and Creativity and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Roula was endorsed by the British Academy for the UK Global Talent Visa in recognition of her contributions to the humanities and creative arts. Through LABRC, she has curated over one hundred international conferences, workshops, and creative research events, fostering dialogue between scholarship and artistic practice.

Her work continues to explore how image, language, and imagination can open new pathways of knowledge at the intersection of creativity, research, and inner life. She also writes The Icon Whisperer, a Substack publication devoted to the symbolic life of images and the imaginative dialogue between art, poetry, and the psyche.

Rachel Newsome:  Writing the Depth Narrative

Story as Inquiry: The Psyche in Narrative Form

This day focuses on narrative as a mode of depth exploration. Through guided exercises, participants will explore:

• Writing from image and memory
• The unconscious in narrative structure
• Archetypal patterning and personal myth
• Writing as reflective method

The session supports participants in transforming personal material into research-relevant narrative artefacts.

Rachel Newsome, PhD is a Jungian-based writer and teacher. She has a background in both the media and academia as a former Editor of the arts & culture magazine Dazed & Confused and a lecturer with twenty years’ experience teaching creative arts subjects, respectively. Rachel holds a doctorate in applying Jungian psychoanalysis to creative writing and is passionate about sharing her experience & expertise with others in an accessible, inclusive and heart-centred way. She leads numerous depth-writing courses, workshops & retreats, in addition to mentoring writers & creative practitioners. More information here: https://rachelnewsome.co.uk/

Anthony Anaxagorou: Poetry and the Unconscious

Language, Image, and the Shadow

Through generative poetry exercises, participants will engage poetry as a portal to the unconscious. This workshop explores:

• Image-making and psychic association
• Voice, fragmentation, and symbolic compression
• The poetic line as a container for ambiguity
• Writing from shadow and contradiction

Participants will experiment with poetic form as research practice.

Anthony Anaxagorou, FRSL, is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher.

His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. It was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022.

His second collection, After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year.

In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry.

Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. He is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection and the founder and curator of WriteBack, a quarterly literary series held at the British Library.

In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton. In 2023 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Louise Austin: Jungian Image-Work and Active Imagination

Image as Psyche: Arts-Based Research Through Symbol

Using visual prompts, guided active imagination, and reflective dialogue, participants will explore:

• The image as autonomous psychic presence
• Jungian approaches to symbol and archetype
• Working with image without premature interpretation
• Relational approaches to image-making

Louise Austin, PhD is a depth psychologist, group facilitator, course leader, senior lecturer and art-based researcher with a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies and an MA in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy.  She has over 30 years of experience in researching, designing, and facilitating personal, group and professional development programmes within higher education, organisations, and the community.  Currently, she is training group facilitator for the Association of Jungian Analysts and senior lecturer/former course leader at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education.  She is also honorary fellow at the University of Essex and a senior practitioner for Artgym an award-winning change consultancy.  She has researched, co-designed, and led the first ever accredited one-year diploma in Creative Collaboration, delivered in the UK and Shanghai.  Stemming from her doctoral research, Dr. Austin has developed a new collaborative method for arts-based group work, research and reflective practice. 

Chloe Rose Campbell – Embodiment, Integration, and Showcase

Embodied Inquiry: Yoga, Psyche, and Creative Integration

These sessions will bring the body into the research process through guided movement and embodied awareness practices. The session includes:

• Somatic grounding and intuitive listening
• Movement and breathing as reflective method
• Integration of image, writing, and body
• Closing showcase of works-in-progress

The week culminates in a reflective sharing circle where participants present their emerging creative research artefacts.

Chloe Rose Campbell was born and raised in the English Lake District, and descends matrilineally from Sarawak, Borneo. In the realm of yoga, Chloe is a scholar- practitioner; in literature, a poet- critic; and in philosophy, an ascetic- aesthete torn between Plato and Nietzsche. In other words, Chloe has her (vegan) cake and eats it too. Poetically, Chloe has been mentored by Joelle Taylor and Malika Booker and is working on her first pamphlet: “Skin the Chameleon”. Chloe has taught yoga in London (triyoga) and internationally – commissioned to devise and deliver teacher training curricula in Fuerteventura, Ibiza, and the Carpathian Mountains. But she is foremost a student of Jivamukti Yoga under the auspices of Emma Henry and Yogeswari, both of whom she has gone on to assist.