Cartographies of Becoming

This paper reports on a longitudinal collaborative self-study situated at the intersection of self-study of practice, arts-based research, and creative theatre-making. Drawing on John Dewey’s conception of education as the continuous reconstruction of experience, we examine how our engagement with self-study evolved from studying creative practice to enacting self-study as creative practice. Our inquiry draws on our published scholarship, conference presentations, performance artefacts, and pedagogical interventions as data, demonstrating our use of dialogic, reciprocal, and arts-based methods including theatrical dialogue, Reciprocal Self-Interview (RSI), reciprocal found poetry, and metaphor writing. Engaging scholarship on reflection, S-STEP methodology, arts-based inquiry, creativity, and embodied experience, we argue that self-study is inherently creative: it is experiential, relational, improvisatory, and oriented toward transformation. We position self-study not as a bounded methodology but as an elastic, aesthetic, and durational practice that can legitimately inhabit creative arts research while remaining accountable to the epistemological commitments of S-STEP. In doing so, we articulate the nature of Self-Study as Creative Practice (SSaCP).