Inquiring Artfully: Provoking Possibilities With/Through/for Qualitative Encounters

The introduction to this special issue considers what might come from envisioning artful inquiry as a mode of thinking that inspires how we orient, how we encounter, and how we move , in our inquiry work. The editors present artful inquiry as a call to practice, to experiment, to play, to wonder. Artful inquiry is a motion, a doing, rather than a thing. A way to live questions; an invitation. In this special issue, the editors and contributing authors draw inspiration from Melissa Freeman’s Modes of Thinking for Qualitative Data Analysis and explore how artful inquiry as a mode of thinking cultivates ruptures, openings, and opportunities for creativity in qualitative research.