Research is often understood as a process of asking questions, gathering evidence and developing new understandings. Yet the questions themselves do not emerge in isolation. They are shaped by our assumptions about the world, what we consider important and the ways we have learned to interpret our surroundings. Often, these assumptions are so familiar to us that they go unrecognised, shaping the frameworks through which research is designed and interpreted, and influencing what becomes visible and what remains overlooked. This raises the question, what if we allowed different cultural ways of knowing to challenge these assumptions, reshaping not only what we seek to understand, but how we go about understanding it?

This question was the starting point for 13.12’s arts and research project, The Cosmovision. Developed over several years, the project explored traditional West African knowledge systems through a collaborative exchange between cultural communities and artists in Senegal and Australia. It resulted in a series of creative works that served as ‘sites of knowledge’, including the documentary film DEUP and the interdisciplinary theatre work GUEWEL.

Throughout the research process, traditional arts practices were engaged with as knowledge systems through which understandings of the natural world, the cosmos and ways of being and relating are embodied, transmitted and sustained. This meant recognising relational and practice-based forms of knowing and moving beyond conventional distinctions between researcher and participant, or between knowledge and experience.

Approaching research in this way requires an environment that allows time for those unfamiliar with a particular cultural worldview to learn from the people who hold and transmit it. This learning requires openness, attentive listening and a willingness to be influenced by what emerges. It also requires an understanding of the contexts, relationships, histories and responsibilities that give cultural practices their meaning. Learning about another way of knowing is not simply a matter of acquiring new information. It can involve recognising the assumptions within one's own way of seeing and becoming open to the possibility that a subject might be approached differently.

When different ways of knowing are given space to shape the process, the inquiry itself can evolve. New questions may emerge, familiar problems may be understood differently, and possibilities may become visible that were not apparent at the beginning.

Approaching research differently does not require abandoning existing methods. It requires recognising that no single framework makes every dimension of the world visible. Different ways of knowing can sit alongside one another, each offering ways of seeing, questioning and interpreting that may reveal something the others cannot. The value lies not necessarily in choosing between them, but in creating the conditions for them to inform the inquiry.

This is an important part of exploring traditional African knowledge systems through arts, research and cultural exchange. Artistic practices can become more than the subject of research; they can become ways of encountering, experiencing and generating understanding.

Perhaps one of the most valuable outcomes of encountering different ways of knowing is not a definitive answer, but the realisation that the ways we seek to understand are not fixed. Reimagining how we approach a question can open up new possibilities for addressing longstanding challenges, uncover solutions that might otherwise remain out of reach, and imagine futures beyond those made possible by our existing ways of thinking.