“Where Do I Go From Here?” in Search of Response: Using Participatory Research Methods in the Development of a Response Community

We live in a social world, where we continuously interact with others in ways that often require response. In this article, we elucidate the transformative role of response communities when undertaking participatory research methods using narrative inquiry. Specifically, we examine how the features intrinsic to response communities—grounded in narrative inquiry methodology—have shaped our care, research practices and transition to scholarship. As we became a response community we felt a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves as a way to uphold the touchstones or guideposts of narrative inquiry. We joined a community of scholars who embraced relationality and engaged with participants as they lived, told, re-lived and retold narratives of everyday experience. In this article, we share conversations and memories of our dialogues and reflections as researchers within our response community. We delve into three central features of response communities: playfulness, the multiplicity of tensions, and the capacity to imagine otherwise. We link these features to a sense of care and belonging that were instrumental when using participatory research methods.