Creative Disruption: A brief guide to convening a method hackathon

In April 2025, the Creative and Participatory Research Methods Community of Practice hosted a method hackathon with SPARK. The event explored how to challenge knowledge hierarchies, amplify underrepresented voices, and drive forward anti-oppressive practices whilst working with creative and participatory research practices. Based on our experiences of convening the event, this blog post presents a framework for centring equity in the design of hackathons and how the format can be used to enhance research culture.

To hack or not to hack? Why we chose the hackathon format

A hackathon is typically a time-bound event where people collaborate to solve problems and generate new ideas. The idea for our method hackathon came from Phil Lambert, a member of the Creative and Participatory Research Methods Community of Practice (CoP), who encouraged us to move beyond sharing practice and towards method innovation. Together with fellow CoP member, Laura Shobiye, we decided to focus our method-stretching and innovation on equitable practice. And just like that, our method hackathon was born.

We chose the hackathon format to disrupt conventional academic event structures. Rather than centring competition (i.e., a winning team or prize) or technological innovation – characteristics in more ‘traditional’ hackathons – our event focused on the sharing of knowledge, catalysing of ideas, perspective-changing and connection aspects that are common across the various forms of hackathons. In this sense, our hackathon borrowed much more from what might be deemed ‘civic’, ‘issue-based’ or ‘social’ hackathons (Kangro and Lepik, 2021; Taylor and Clarke, 2018) than traditional ones. Our method hackathon aimed to be a playful, multi-sector, multi-expertise space where researchers, creatives, practitioners, professionals and experts-by-experience could collaborate on stretching methods and reimagining creative and participatory research practice.

Designing for Disruption: Our hackathon’s structure

We designed the method hackathon to move participants from inspiration to experimentation and idea generation. The day began with informal arrivals and refreshments, followed by a welcome session outlining the event’s aims, structure, and principles of accessibility and inclusion.

Initial provocations came through lightning talks and poetry from Luret Lar, Peg Digitalis, Phil Lambert, Mymuna Soleman and Vicky Timperley, offering diverse perspectives on equity in creative research. Participants then worked in small groups to adapt existing methods using a SWOT analysis to enhance inclusivity and accessibility. Dawn Mannay then introduced “sandboxing,” a hands-on qualitative research method, before groups tackled specific research challenges. Using insights from the day and ‘serious play’ techniques, they rapidly designed equity-centred methods aimed at dismantling power imbalances and the inclusion needs of research participants. The event wrapped-up with a structured networking activity and some commitments as to ‘what next’.

The agenda was intentionally structured to build progressively – from exploring and critiquing existing practices to reimagining methods through an equity lens. We also deliberately included informal and formal spaces for conversations and networking to enable people to connect and build relationships.

Building equity into the hackathon’s design

An inequitable event won’t generate the best ideas for equitable practice. It was essential that our hackathon embodied the values we aimed to promote. This began with securing funding to support accessibility, remuneration, and refreshments so that we could host the event in-line with our principles.

We structured the day using facilitation principles adapted from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which we shared with participants at the outset. We also ensured a diverse mix of attendees and contributors by having:

• Paid places for experts-by-experience, public participants, and unwaged attendees
• Speaker fees for contributors not otherwise funded
• A budget for access and inclusion costs
• A convening team and contributor group representing varied demographics, sectors, and perspectives

We were intentional about decentring whiteness by ensuring racialised communities were actively involved, visible, and valued throughout the event.

To support inclusion, our registration form asked about dietary and access needs, framed as: “How can we make this event more inclusive, accessible, and welcoming for you?” The word “welcoming” invited broader responses, allowing us to make thoughtful adaptations to the space, food, transport, and materials.

Recognising that people express themselves differently, we used a variety of formats to facilitate conversation and idea generation. Perhaps the most challenging – but  important – aspect was embracing flexibility and impromptu divergences. Where possible, we adapted in real-time to attendee’ responses, contributions, and needs, ensuring the event felt like it was gently responding to the people in the room, rather than being imposed on them.

Ready, Steady, Hack: Six key ideas to convening a research culture hackathon

1. The Challenge: A clear central question or problem to solve helps to shape the entire event. Ours was: How can creative and participatory research methods be more equitable in design and application?This guided our choice of contributors, activities, and structure.
2. Platforming Diverse Voices: We purposely invited contributors with varied expertise, including lived and tacit knowledge, and sought to elevate those who are often unheard in research settings. We can all get stuck in our silos with our thinking, so hearing from people who are different than us and have different experiences can help us see different possibilities and think ‘outside of the box’.
3. Who Gets to Speak and Be Heard? Equity means removing barriers to participation. We offered remunerated places for experts-by-experience and unwaged attendees, speaker fees for unfunded contributors, and travel support. We made space for different ways of knowing and types of knowledge to be shared. A key guiding principle was: “Alone we know a little, together we know a lot.”
4. Design for Interaction: We’ve all been in workshops that are ‘death by Powerpoint’ (Note: Other slide-based software are available!), so think about how alternative formats can be used in your event. We used short talks, group discussion, reflection spaces and serious play to aid engagement and ideation on the day. We minimised “talking from the front” and emphasised small-group collaboration to keep energy and engagement high.
5. Immense, Not Intense: Hackathons can be intensive due to their timebound nature. We chose to focus on immersion and wellbeing in our design, allowing generous time for activities, adapting the schedule in real time, and providing quiet spaces, refreshments, and a silent room for rest or prayer. This created an atmosphere of care and responsiveness.
6. The “So What?” While hackathons may not always yield immediate outputs, they are powerful tools for learning and relationship-building. To ensure participants saw that their time was valued, we committed to sharing the learning from the event in the form of this blog (ta-dah!) on how to run a research culture focused hackathon and a forthcoming blog on the ideas on equitable practice in creative and participatory research that can from the event. Watch this space!

Although these ideas underpinned our method hackathon, we’d suggest that they are transferable to any form of hackathon that has a civic or social purpose. They are specifically applicable to hackathons that are purposefully trying to bring together different types of expertise and create equitable learning spaces. Using these core ideas to hack elements of research cultures – method or otherwise – can help us to examine, question and positively disrupt the way we do things and the way we think. And from that creative disruption, who knows what could emerge?

The Equitable Practice in Creative and Participatory Research method hackathon was made possible and supported by Cardiff University’s Research Culture Fund (24-25).