‘ … But we are academics!’ a reflection on using arts-based research activities with university colleagues

Arts-based practices, although familiar in some areas of educational research have the capacity to surprise and to shock: they hold promise but also pose risks. In this essay we introduce arts-based research practices and in particular cut-up and collage. We invite readers to reflect on our experiences of arts-based educational research activities with a group of academic colleagues. We describe what we did, what went wrong, what went right and what we learned.