From violence to strength: A reflexive evaluation of arts-based participatory research in Amantaní, Peru

Abstract

This paper offers a reflexive, practice-based process evaluation of arts-based participatory methods (ABM) within a community-led violence prevention project in an Indigenous Andean community on Amantaní Island, Peru. Working within a Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework, the project engaged women and men through six creative methods – problem and solution trees, life history mapping with stones and petals, role play, body mapping, visioning drawings and Most Significant Change storytelling – drawing on visual, narrative and embodied modalities. These methods supported participants to articulate structural harms, strengthen confidence and public voice and co-design locally grounded solutions. By tracing how these activities unfolded in practice, we explore the relational, affective and political dimensions of ABM, showing how creative practices enabled trust-building, emotional expression and shifts in dialogue and power. We also reflect critically on the ethical tensions that emerged when working within externally funded, time-limited structures in a setting marked by high levels of gendered violence and marginalisation. This study contributes to growing scholarship on feminist and decolonial approaches to participatory research, offering concrete insights into the transformative potential and limitations of arts-based practice in under-resourced contexts marked by gendered and structural violence.