Why I had to do this as an independent
I have been an independent researcher since 1999 and one of my specialist areas is creative research methods. I wrote a book about this and the first edition was published in 2015. At the time I was on the Board of the SRA and in contact with the Head of Research at the British Library. I worked with them and my publisher, Policy Press, to hold a one-day conference on creative research methods at the British Library in May 2015 where the book was launched. The conference was a great success. Since then I have wanted to do another creative research methods conference, and have asked various universities and other research organisations I work with whether they would help me put one on. They all said ‘no’ – they were doing other conferences, it was the wrong time in the REF cycle, try again next year, etc etc. So in mid-2022 I began to play with the idea of putting one on myself.
A big part of the reason I felt able to consider this is that I was diagnosed autistic in February 2021, and by August I had a part-time support worker, Rachell, funded by the DWP via Access to Work, to help me in my business. Rachell is wonderful and has revolutionised my life. I no longer have to spend evenings and weekends doing admin jobs which I am very bad at and take me ages. I can work almost normal hours and concentrate on the tasks I do well.
Getting advice from experienced conference organisers
I spent the summer seeking advice from research professionals in my networks, who were unfailingly generous with their time and ideas. Particularly useful pieces of advice included:
“Don’t hold the conference at a university, use a community venue. It will give a strong message to practitioner-researchers, independent researchers etc that the conference is for them, and academics will come anyway.” (Dawn Mannay)
“Hire an expert to run the online side of the conference.” (Graham Farrant)
“Set up an organising group to help you.” (Nicola Shaughnessy)
Choosing a venue that appeals to all types of researchers
So the International Creative Research Methods Conference was born. After much research (mostly by Rachell), the venue I chose was The Studio in Manchester. I had been there for a workshop in 2017, and it is centrally situated, close to Piccadilly Station. The people at The Studio were really helpful; I had a lot of decisions to make, and they were endlessly patient with my vacillations. As was Rachell – I don’t know how many conversations we had about ticket prices, but she never lost patience with me. The venue director was horrified at how low I was setting my prices, but I am more concerned to make the conference accessible than to make loads of money. Though I do hope it will yield a small profit, so that I can (a) pay myself retrospectively for all the time I am spending on its preparation, and (b) have a float available to, for example, fly in a keynote speaker from the geo-political South for the conference in 2024. Because, yes, I am not seeing this as a one-off event. Unless it falls flat on its face – but so far the signs are good.
Bringing in expertise to ensure quality and value
On Graham’s recommendation, I hired Rohan Jackson from Nomad IT to run the online conference. We had a meeting and he was enormously helpful, which is not surprising as he has 20 years’ experience of running online conferences. He is also providing the booking system for the conference, all for a very reasonable flat rate.
I decided not to set up an organising group, because I thought that was asking too much of people, and groups need co-ordinating which would be extra work for me. But the suggestion helped me to think through the input I would need from others. I asked different people to help me with specific tasks. Dawn Mannay and Alastair Roy gave invaluable feedback on my draft call for contributions. Jon Rainford and Azumah Dennis are helping me to assess the proposals and shape the conference programme. And Rachell is handling all the admin: proposals were sent to her and she made a spreadsheet, and she will be working with Rohan on taking bookings and chasing payments.
My first choices of keynote speakers, Pam Burnard and Caroline Lenette, both said ‘yes’ straight away. Advertising the call for contributions was easy, too: mostly via Twitter (because we began in September, before it descended into chaos) and LinkedIn, also through the conference sponsors who have been very helpful, and my blog and patrons. And the Academy of Social Sciences, of which I am a Fellow, put it in their newsletter too.
Funding the conference through ticket sales and sponsorship
The really scary part was signing a contract with the venue which commits me to paying them over £15,000 next year. I have enough savings to cover that but it was a leap of faith. However, there is a very good chance that the venue cost will be covered by the ticket sales. And I feel even more optimistic because I have five sponsors (including the SRA, Quirkos, Policy Press, and NCRM who are providing some bursaries) with the possibility of more, and we have had 120 proposals for contributions.
An innovative programme that allows researchers to be creative
Programming will be a challenge because one of the innovations at this conference has been to let potential contributors tell me how long they want, rather than prescribing sessions of specific lengths. I stipulated any length from 15 minutes to 2 hours, in multiples of 15 minutes (that was another genius idea of Dawn’s – she pointed out, quite rightly, that otherwise it could be extremely difficult to formulate the programme).
Another innovation is an outdoor stream, for people who want to try out mobile methods, participant observation, dérive, urban exploration and so on. As the venue is in Manchester’s lively Northern Quarter, it seemed sensible to offer this, although at the time of writing I don’t yet know whether we have any proposals for outdoor methods. I hope we do…
Support from other independent scholars
My fifth sponsor is the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, a global organisation despite its name, which has an active UK branch called FIRE-UK. NCIS are very excited because, to the best of their knowledge, this is the first time an international conference has been founded by an independent researcher/scholar. (If you know otherwise, please tell us!) They are very kindly providing not only financial sponsorship, but also a conference chair and a volunteer to manage the online chat. I am delighted to have indies in these roles, and doubly delighted that someone else is chairing, because although I am good at chairing events, it is a role I do not enjoy.
So the conference is coming together, but there is still a lot of work to do before the actual event on 11-12 September 2023. After the conference (followed by a holiday, which I will really need by then) I will write another post for this blog, to let you know what happens. Watch this space!
Further Information:
Further information about the conference will be available on the conference webpage and on my blog. Tickets will go on sale in early March.
Author Bio:
Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and an independent scholar since 2011. She writes books on research methods, research ethics, and academic writing. Helen is the co-author, with Richard Phillips, of Creative Writing for Social Research (Policy Press, 2021).
Further reading:
Diversifying the social research sector through participatory and peer research methods
Creative writing for research