Wednesday 21 June 2017

Really good meeting today with Zanib, artist Nazia, Kate, Mariam and Katy. The pause and space allowed since Zanib and Mariam worked on gathering the last interviews of the British Pakistani women who left Clifton School in the 1970s has been worthwhile. Today we came to new understandings and space to connect the further development of this project with the wider TYS project which Kate as PI was able to enable. Katy's research so far was useful and especially the quote by Sullivan : 'To lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers', which expresses what I feel happened for each of us today. Through the process of this project whilst coming up with exciting ideas of how we can collaboratively engage all members of this project: including the poet Nayla, we have yet to meet, the older women and the young women yet to be confirmed, we each reflected upon our individual relationships with the project, the group and the living knowledge that we each bring. It also brought up a glimpse of a new way of universities being part of the community. It seems to me that these new understandings need time to percolate and that there is again space before confirming the arts methodologies as today was in fact the art. This said for me we reached what felt a more comfortable place and vision of how we can collaboratively create and artwork that both honours those involved and is enjoyable, whilst looking at one of the core themes in this specific project of the notion of success.
Taking Yourselves Seriously and the Association of Researchers in Community and Voluntary Sectors  (ARVAC)

This was a discussion between Jayne Humm from ARVAC and the research team from Taking Yourselves Seriously.

We started by discussing the Big Local. Jayne Humm (ARVAC) informed the group about the Big Local project: £240 million, covering 150 areas, to be spent by 2027. A series of partnerships will take place, involving local residents, to make local areas better places to live in. The Big Local project is funded by the National Lottery. The initiative involves £1 million worth of funding per area, provided directly to residents so as to allow them to pull together partnerships and find out what their community wants and for them to decide how to spend the money, and come up with a plan spanning 10 years: people from the community helping people in the community. It is taking time to work the whole thing out, though, due to some people having led flagship projects, some being slow to get going, and some needing to engage the community more before they commence. 

The question is: how do we capture some of what we are doing?

We discussed evaluation of community projects. The TYS Project comes alive when we talk about it, more than the written word or filming it, and the challenge will be in capturing that.  As part of the evaluation it will be important to: look at spaces for participation, partnerships and decision making; look at community spaces; unpack and analyse the project, and establish how it gets converted into something meaningful.  

Furthermore, it is important to evaluate the continuation of communities who have started fantastic projects but then are moved somewhere else when the experts have moved on. It is also important to tell the stories which wouldn’t have happened if money hadn’t been there and the power dynamics of people coming together to create and influence change.

The project will enable the catalytic vitality of interaction and experience change in people at a face-to-face level, enabling conversations which bring the project to life.

A research network of unpublished knowledge will be inspiring and, moreover, destabilise what research is: it is about moving into a different space and identifying what a different mode of research looks like.

Arts methodologies for social cohesion involve:
-        Complexity/multiple perspectives
-        Dispersed subjectivity – collective creative work, e.g. Zanib’s interviews
-        Relational work that moves between ideas and doing things
-        Non-linguistic forms of knowledge production – making, drawing, embodied articulation, feeling
-        Belonging and site specific work as key to practice
-        Re-framing perceptions, making meaning differently



Wednesday 7 June 2017

Post from Zanib

Just completed all the interviews of Clifton school girls, amazing to go back in time, very emotional but also humbling, very empowering to listen to stories of hope and resilience. These are stories social researchers often don't get to, the lived experience of women from ethnic minority community.
Me and Panni are looking at the interviews at the moment. A question that I am reflecting on, whether the women would have said as much to a researcher they did not know or did they reveal a bit more to me as they knew me. A bit of ethical dilemma.
The stories challenged some of the narratives of Muslim families and the patriarch culture as most of the women have said the biggest support they got was from male members of the family, father, husband or brother.

I am reflecting on how the arts can capture the emotional embodiment of women's journey, the conflicts, the barriers, the successes.

Tuesday 6 June 2017

The journey so far as part of the CTG

We agreed at the Critical Thinking Group that our role was  to get alongside the projects, maintain a reflective distance, ask questions, listen, observe, learn, as well as being part of the project team. I have been working with Zanib who at this stage has been carrying out interviews with British Asian Women who left Clifton school in the 1970s. The interviews have given rise to the sharing of powerful, rich and moving personal stories. For me as part of the Critical Thinking Group I have verbally and by email discussed this process with Zanib and noted the emotion that the stories have raised, which in itself deserves time and space. Having not been there at the time of the interviews I can only read them and ask questions, and note the care that needs to be taken ethically in how the knowledge produced from these stories is shared. Reflective distance has as yet happened by not being present for the interviews, though hopefully I will be there fore some of the arts workshops when they happen. The next step is for the knowledge in some way to be shared with the artists so that they can then progress initial ideas for arts methodologies that were discussed when Zanib and I met with one of the artists, which could perhaps be through emerging themes, but this will be discussed when we meet later this month.

Thinking space



This blog is a thinking space and is about reflecting as well as doing.
We did a presentation for ARVAAC yesterday about the project and it went really well - lots of community workers were there and academics.
In conversation with Patrick, Katy and Steve Yesterday and with ARVAC, our partner, we had some interesting thoughts. This prompted me to think about the following issues:

Ethics
Roles
Knowledge
Co-production

One thing that might be helpful is to think through these issues:

1. How is co-production working in your project?
2. How are arts methodologies being used in your project - conceptually, instrumentally or to create a new object?
3. What issues are arising around roles and responsibilities in the project?
4. What issues are arising around ethics in the project? and
5. Whose knowledges are surfacing in the project?

It would be really good if people had the time to post some thoughts about this