Devising an Ethnographic and Heuristic Approach to Inquiry

By Jeff M.Poulin

Here at Creative Generation, we believe that how we do our work is just as important as the work itself. As a Collective, we are guided by our values and have determined a set of ways of working, which I articulated in my blog titled, “Refining A Theory Of Change.” 

We have made four commitments – see our values and commitments on the website – to being a values-forward arts service organization focused on capacity building and learning. 

  1. We commit to being values-forward in our work, enabling our values to drive our actions.

  2. We commit to co-create the sustainable capacities within individuals, teams, organizations, and collectives needed to achieve their objectives, ultimately making our role redundant. 

  3. We commit to transparency, documentation, and distribution of how and what we learn: we believe that insights uncovered from collective work are vital knowledge to enable the communal progress of our field.

  4. We commit to acting in service to our stakeholders and the broader fields within which we work.

In this blog, I want to focus on bullets 2-4 (don’t worry our values are discussed in this blog), especially how they map against our theory of change. 

Our Ethnographic & Heuristic Inquiry Model

Throughout our work, since 2019, we have focused on numerous outcomes beyond the obligated ones outlined in any scope of work. As a Collective, we seek to balance capacity building with learning – and we believe that our own learning should also benefit the fields within which we work (this is why we are a Public Benefit Corporation!).

So, beginning in early 2022, we embarked on a journey to explore the foundational, documented knowledge in those fields – education, culture, and social change – to lend language to the organic process we had once developed. Read more about this process in the following section of this blog.

Throughout the year, we described our work as “part consultancy, part think tank, and part service organization, wrapped up in processes of critical reflection.” To be honest, none of our constituents really knew what that meant, but we were pretty clear on how we worked and how we wanted to operate in collaboration with our stakeholders – so, we just rolled with it and simultaneously moved through a process of “trying on language” found in other domains to see what felt most appropriate.

Today, we are pleased to share our new inquiry model, which undergirds each and every project we pursue at Creative Generation.

In this model, you will see the complex relationships between two types of inquiry –
ethnographic and heuristic – grounded in critical reflection and displayed as a sequential process (yet, we recognize that it may be cyclical after critical points of reflection). Specifically, I invite you to notice:

  • The three types of work that we transition through: consultancy, think tank, and service organization – you can read more about the desired outcomes of these stages in our Theory of Change.

  • The strategic pauses – which invite incubation and external feedback – as well as the operationalized modalities of critical reflection throughout.

  • The numbered, overarching, and specific phases of the process, which guide the scope and sequence. 

Developing a Working Model

I will be honest: I am a nerd for organizational theory. I let this fact about me out when I authored an article in Arts Education Policy Review, in 2020 on organizational response to the COVID-19 and subsequent pandemics. However, down deep, I love doing organizational strategy for work at Creative Generation – we get to be an incubator for the very theories we invoke in projects out in the field.

Throughout 2022, I was committed to exploring the foundational, documented knowledge in the education, culture, and social change fields to lend language to the organic process we had once developed internally in our Collective. I will spare you the full literature review and instead highlight three primary arenas of inquiry within which we played:

When intertwining these three arenas of inquiry, a unifying tactic emerged across each: the application of arts-based methods can both enhance, animate, and amplify the inquiries, data collection, and meaning-making. As an organization which values artistic, cultural, and creative learning, this was essential to our process – you can learn more about these methods within the strategies of our Institute for Creative Social Transformation.

So, as we mapped these together – both in language and in practice – a new sequential practice emerged; this has become Creative Generation’s inquiry model.

What’s Next?

Following this model and its process, we are committed to its continued refinement – yes, we are The Matrix-style using a process to refine a process. Over the course of 2023, we will be employing this model and will engage in strategic pauses along the way to reflect anything that we have learned.

During this process, we may be silent on the matter, but (as always) we are committed to sharing our learnings. Standby for more in the future!