I have worked on art direction and design for several publications based on participatory arts-based research connected to the MoVE project at the University of the Witwatersrand. These books explore visual-narrative production in social research, serving as archives and representations of the featured projects, including reflections and commentary from various voices on project themes, processes, and insights. Independently published, these books allow for broader project documentation and dissemination than traditional academic journals, reaching wider audiences through distribution to participants, conferences, exhibitions, and social media. The design approach across the books helps establish a recognizable brand while allowing individual projects to stand out. Increasing public engagement has always been a key motivation behind these publications.

Overview my publication design for arts-based research projects

I have worked on art direction and design for several publications involving several participatory arts-based research projects.

The bulk of the work evolved out of my participation in the creation of a series of publications for the MoVE Project at the Africa Centre for Migration and Society. These book-projects were a continuation of our exploration of visual-narrative production in social research. These publications serve as project archives and project representations: they contextualise, frame, and represent the projects that are featured. The publications are structured around featured project work and reflections. Written by a range of voices, the reflections provide commentary on project themes, processes, and insights. The project work that is included in the books presents the artefacts and outcomes of the project participants.

Being independently published, these publications have allowed researchers to expand the project documentation, reflection, theorisation, and dissemination process beyond narrower means journal-based research. The engagements around the books have allowed researchers to test the documentation and representational aspects of projects beyond what traditional academic channels allow and acknowledge, being narrowly focussed on measurable quantitative and qualitative research output. The ability to share these publications have allowed some of the ideas researchers are working with to reach broader audiences: books were distributed to project participants, displayed at conferences, included in public exhibitions, and widely shared online social media platforms.

Disciplinary interest in increasing public engagement has always been a driving factor in the production of these books. While we were making the first book we knew that more project feature books would follow, all within the MoVE stable of projects. We, therefore, created an underlying design that could work as a holding and grouping device between a range of different projects, whilst being flexible enough that a featured project could stand out on its own within the project group. This approach has contributed to creating a recognisable brand for what has come to be known as The MoVE Project.

Researchers with the ACMS Elsa Oliveira and Jo Vearey have stood as series editors, and were important in the development of the series as a whole. The planning, design, and layout process of each publication occurred in a conversation between the series editors, and the book editors who lead individual projects, and me. This series of MoVE projects publications discontinued in 2020 with a final catalogue of researcher’s work. In 2024, in a separate project that referenced the MoVE books, I undertook the art direction and design for a new publication Nereida Ripero Muñiz, whom I had previously worked with, and her co-researcher Kate Shand.

The Meaning of Home (2024)

This is a book for an arts-based research project involving children from the Three2Six project at the Dominican Convent School in Belgravia. I followed an art direction and design process to showcase the several week long project in a way that tracks the process and methods used by the researchers. Our references for this project were the various MoVE Publications, Imbali ArtBooks: Adventuring Into Arts Series, Creative Resistance: Participatory Methods for Engaging Queer Youth, and several recipe books including In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries. The goal of the book is to share methods to enable others replicate the workshop in other contexts, and to demonstrate value and impact of these methods. The book includes backstory and stories told by participants, the participants images and objects, and reflections by the researchers and colleagues. The audience for the book are migrant researchers, art therapists, educators, and NGO workers or people running programmes at community centers.

SeaM: Security at the Margins (2020)

Cities are a conundrum. They are at once spaces of connectivity and marginalisation, optimism and injustice. Rapid urban growth, persistent structural oppression, and the limitations of urban governance are issues that city dwellers face. But for some, living in cities also results in improved economic standing, stronger capabilities, and expanded freedoms. The Security at the Margins (SeaM) project sought to explore these tensions and contradictions. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the South Africa National Research Foundation (NRF)—SeaM was a three-year collaboration that brought together the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Edinburgh, local government, and civil society partners to better understand, and respond to, marginality in urban South Africa, Kenya, and the United Kingdom. The hope was to create the foundations for a long-lasting, international, inter-institutional partnership. This publication features research conducted during the SeaM project.

Mwangaza Mama (2019)

Mwangaza Mama is a creative storytelling project that was undertaken in collaboration with a small group of cross-border migrant women living in Johannesburg. Inspired by previous MoVE work, the main aim of the two-year project was to learn more about migrant women’s everyday experiences of the city by including them in the production of knowledge about issues that affect them. The textile collages and narrative stories produced by the women for public audiences weave through various aspects of their lives, taking the reader on a visceral journey of intense hurt and healing to self-recognition and self-power. Alongside these thought provoking works are reflections by the project facilitators and their colleagues who work in similar areas. Each contribution adds richness to the tapestry of this important book.

Know My Story (2017)

“Before you judge me, know my story!” The 14 sex workers involved in the KNOW MY STORY project took pictures, created collages, and wrote their stories, asking their audiences to listen to what they had to say about themselves, their lives, their struggles, and their reasons for selling sex. The project forms part of a larger ethnographic study on the experiences, health practices, and well-being of sex workers in Soweto, South Africa. Inspired by projects conducted by the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in collaboration with sex workers and the Sisonke National Sex Worker Movement, the participatory arts-based approach of the KNOW MY STORY project was an attempt to challenge power dynamics and hierarchies in research and to involve sex workers more directly in the production of knowledge about issues that affect them.

Metropolitan Nomads (2017)

Using photography and an ethnographic approach, Metropolitan Nomads takes an intimate look at the everyday life of Somalis in Johannesburg, where collective stories of migration and survival interweave with the individual desires and hopes of seeking a better life outside a country shattered by decades of internal conflict. This is a collaborative project between researcher Nereida Ripero-Muñiz and photojournalist Salym Fayad, supported by the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at Wits University.

Izwi Lethu (2016)

Izwi Lethu is Zulu for ‘our voice’. More than 30 sex work representatives brought their unique voices to share the Izwi Lethu newsletter in its first year. Featured writers chose to write on a vast array of topics, taking the reader from a courtroom in Botswana to online adult chat rooms. While challenges faced by sex workers are well documented, their voices are often absent in public discussions of sex work, academic representations of sex work, and media reporting on sex work. This participatory arts-based project seeks to highlight sex worker stories in sex worker’s own words. Built on previous partnerships between the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) and the Sisonke Sex Worker Movement, this project aims to link research to issues of social justice and and advocacy.

The Sex Worker Zine Project (2016)

Featuring the zines produced by 24 men, women, and transgender persons who live and sell sex in the Gauteng, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa, this publication includes reflections by participants, civil society activists, and researchers from across the globe. The contributors to this publication challenge the stereotype of the migrant sex worker, calling for a move away from a single, rehearsed story; they challenge us to confront knowledge politics; to (re)consider ways of producing, sharing, and engaging with multiple narratives. We hope that the stories shared through these zines, and the reflections from other contributors, provide opportunities for varied forms of public engagement on issues relating to migration, sex work and the politics of knowledge, in ways that honour the storyteller, and – critically – move away from the single story.

Queer Crossings (2016)

This anthology is the first collection of stories and image-making from LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers in South Africa. It features non-fiction, poetry, and visual art from eleven individuals who participated in projects with GALA, ACMS, Seattle University, and SUNY Downstate Medical Center between 2014 and 2015. The works highlight the challenges these migrants face in South Africa, where they hoped to find safety but encountered difficulties in accessing services and staying safe. The contributors often shared stories that they had previously kept hidden due to fear of victimization if their sexuality or gender identity were revealed.