Imagining and Playfulness in Narrative Inquiry.

Abstract

Our personal and professional lives draw us to a shared interest in ‘identity’ and ‘relationships’, and our understanding is shaped by our lives as narrative inquirers. As we struggle to name this complexity we begin to play with metaphors; the metaphor of ‘kites’, and thus string, kite and kite flyer provide us with a way to think about imagining and playfulness in relationships and in narrative inquiry. As we play with these metaphors we see how much our understanding of relationships shape our being and engagement with others and that imagination is inextricably intertwined within our lives and our relationships. By attending to this playfulness, our spaces of knowing enlarge and spaces of possibility are never ending; yet embedded in these possibilities is also a recognition of how difficult it is to stay in relation, to remain wakeful to the tensions and boulders of the landscapes and stories we live within.