Fieldmaking in the Shaughnessy Village: Conducting Arts-Based Research in Response to Human Spaces

What can human spaces teach us when we engage them in open-ended observation and artmaking? This visual essay shares the practices of three artist-teachers engaging in fieldmaking, an arts-based research methodology conjoining open-ended artistic inquiry, spatial theory, and fieldwork in Montréal’s Shaughnessy village, a densely populated, transient neighbourhood shaped by ongoing redevelopment and mixed-use infrastructures. Drawing on visual ethnography, research-creation, and place-based art education, we engaged the site through iterative cycles of walking, observing, making, and reflection, attuning to the specificities of space. The authors reflect on the implications of their process, arguing fieldmaking offered a flexible and generative approach that informed their making and multi-contextual teaching in myriad ways.