Love as an energizing feature of action research for territorial development

In the face of today’s urgent societal challenges, there are constant calls for regional governments to respond to them. Yet, policies, including those developed through action research, appear to be transforming too slowly. This paper focuses on love as a methodological dimension of action research that can energize these responses. One of the main features of love is that it requires mastering the interplay between reason and emotion, and I use art-based action research as a vehicle to explore this interplay. More specifically, my data in this paper are the poems I wrote when I participated in an experiment led by an artist on social media. The discussion of the case focuses on how we can use the lessons learnt in the experiment to integrate love in action research for territorial development.