Abstract

This chapter explores what it means to rethink method as a generative, speculative process rather than a procedural plan. Drawing on Deleuze’s image of thought and on research-creation and non-representational methodologies, I examine how possibility thinking is activated when inquiry is oriented towards emergence, relationality, and the as-yet-unthought. The chapter revisits a six-week participatory mapmaking residency with nine 17-year-old students in a cultural space in Bristol, UK. The residency became a site for experimenting with conditions that might permit genuine thought to flourish through sensing, making, and encounter. Guiding this work were a set of “Rules for researching” that operated as principles rather than prescriptions, shaping how the research space was staged and how I navigated tensions between openness, constraint, and care. Through examples from the residency, I show how these rules functioned as ground rules, emergency protocols, and expert guidance, and how they were continually reshaped in practice. I conclude by offering insights into how researchers might craft rules that do not keep inquiry on the straight and narrow, but instead encourage the kind of risk-taking required in speculative, process-based research.