Nic Dickson
Circle Dance Group facilitated by Nic. Annexe Communities, Glasgow.
Visual Inquiry. Visual notes as a method of ethical engagement, inclusive representation, effective dissemination.
School of Health & Wellbeing, interior. Community Hub at the School of Health & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow. Nic listens to what the women tell her with words and silences, with their bodies and with their resistance, and from there builds something together. And this is already a revolution. Nic Dickson holds in her hand a dragonfly made from an egg carton, and when she shows it to the women in groups there’s always someone who says it’s kids’ stuff, but she doesn’t insist, doesn’t explain, listens. Waits. And then smiles: wait until we get to the glitter; if you fancy it, let’s get a bit lost.
It’s not that she has a pre-established plan to impose. It’s that she listens to what the women tell her with words and silences, with their bodies and with their resistance, and from there builds something together. And this is already a revolution, because in traditional scientific research everything must follow a rigid protocol, a method decided beforehand that confuses rigidity with rigour, whilst Nic has understood that true rigour lies in being flexible enough to follow what emerges, attentive enough to grasp the unexpected, and compose it into something meaningful. This is what she always does: she composes harmony from pieces that others wouldn’t even see as composable.
Her family had told her to get a proper degree before pursuing art, and so she’d put away her markers. She studied psychology and sociology and earned two master’s degrees; thereafter, she worked as a researcher with pre-established questionnaires, and each time, she felt as if she was entering, taking what was needed, and leaving, as if those people were mere receptacles of information.
The breaking point came with Roma women, when she had to give them a form to fill in and knew they couldn’t read it. At that point she told herself: I’m not doing this anymore.
During her doctorate she worked with young women who’d survived abuse and childhood trauma. They requested art sessions. Nic offered to provide them. For six months, she entered that room with twelve women and art materials; she’d prepared a study program. But many didn’t want to do what she initially suggested. So, instead of insisting, she thought it better to listen to them. Sometimes they had fun, sometimes they left, traumatic situations were confronted, and she learned to follow the rhythm of what emerged. Moments when something melted because she’d known how to wait, to adapt.
It was there that everything came together. She discovered that what she was doing had a name – “arts-based research” – and that there were other people doing it.
Until recently Nic worked at the School of Health and Wellbeing in Glasgow. She keeps using her visual scribe skills in her academic research roles. These are particularly effective when she’s working with communities: she brings markers and draws in real time, capturing words, making people laugh. It is transparent. It is playful. If someone says it’s like pulling a rabbit out of a hat she draws a rabbit and everyone laughs.
While working as a junior research assistant in a project involving South Asian women who’d experienced domestic violence, she used collage, and while they busied themselves with scissors and magazines, they talked, and thanks to the circle that held them together around a common endeavour, they revealed things they would never have said.
The story that changed everything began by chance. Adults in recovery from addiction: come, let’s talk to medical students. Nic: can I draw it? They liked the idea. She met Lindsay Crawford, a doctor who’d written a paper about those meetings. Nic: I’ve spoken with the recovery community; these meetings change people’s self-perception.
They found funding and worked together for a year. The result was a comic book that has been endorsed by the Royal College of General Practitioners and added to the substance misuse learning module for NHS England. It has also been added to the Drug and Alcohol workforce learning directory of the Scottish Government. It’s huge, the impact. A professor from Edinburgh called it brilliant. People from the community cried when they recognised their thoughts, ideas, and sometimes sketches represented in the comic. True co-production.
Nic is a Grade 7, junior position, with a full time 4-year contract without guarantees, three children, started late. But this very precarity, instead of paralysing her, has made her capable of composing pathways where others would see fragmentation. She’s never had the luxury of a long-term plan; so she’s learnt to stay in the unexpected, to take what was there and weave together these apparently disconnected threads into something coherent and positive. For herself and for others. It’s the same capacity she uses in research: listening to what emerges, adapting, composing harmony. When, recently, the announcement came out for a role as “Community Embedded Researcher” – four years in Stirling – five people wrote to her: no one has these skills, except you. At the interview, Nic decided to follow her approach: I’ll listen, I’ll adapt. She got the job.
What Nic does is listen. She enters: Hi, I’m Nic, I’m here to learn. She talks about herself, that she tattoos bananas, that she has three children. And listens. If they talk to her about the noisy neighbour when she’d want to ask about cancer, she listens about the noisy neighbour, because she knows that’s the starting point, that one can’t impose a path from above. She listens and then adapts, changes direction. If someone says markers are kids’ stuff, she doesn’t insist, tries collage. If collage doesn’t work, she tries something else. It’s this attentive flexibility, this following the thread of what emerges instead of imposing a rigid method, that allows her to reach where traditional research doesn’t reach.
Someone gave her a pencil case, and she wrote her name on it because she was excited. It brings her joy, she loves markers, loves dragonflies made from cartons.
There’s something subversive in this joy. Recently, she presented her work on “Communiversity” in Prague, where 15 community members were being trained to be peer researchers. She frankly spoke about what she felt worked and where it didn’t feel successful. The feedback: finally, someone who admits that things don’t always go according to plan.
Nic: I’ve always looked for my place, I’ve always wanted to use the arts and work with people, but I didn’t know what job could contain all this, and it took time to understand that I had to invent it myself.
The markers are out, the dragonflies ready. Nic has found her place, a way of doing research that holds together rigour and care and presence, through joy, which is her contribution: having demonstrated that joy isn’t the opposite of science but can be its most rigorous method.
Nic Dickson’s key dates
1998 · Volunteering at 'Concern for Mental Health', leading art activities with women who experienced poor mental wellbeing. She discovers the transformative potential of creativity and non-formal learning.
2002 · Scottish Community Development Centre. Following travels in India, Africa and South-East Asia, she learns to facilitate community research and engage people in shaping change.
2008-2012 · Birth of her three children. A joyful and challenging experience that reshapes her understanding of resilience, care and learning in everyday life.
2016-2023 · Doctorate at the University of Glasgow, arts-based participatory research with women who experienced homelessness and sexual trauma.
2023-2025 · Researcher in General Practice and Primary Care at Glasgow.
2024-2025 · Chair of SCUTREA and new research role at Stirling. Decades as a visual artist, educator and activist converge to advance social justice through participatory research.