Category Archives: Interventions

Feedback from Fifth Intervention

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I would like to start this post by giving my own feedback for this intervention. I didn’t take part in it, obviously. But I feel like I’ve come full circle. Let me explain. For my application for MAAI we were asked to write about creativity. This is what I wrote:

Creativity is defined as the state of being creative and also as the ability to move away from traditional ideas, rules, patterns and relationships, to create new ideas and interpretations. I think this is so important as a lot of people struggle to express themselves with words. It’s seen as ‘weak’ or ‘embarrassing’ especially amongst men. But this is why creativity is so important and can make the world a better, and arguably healthier place. Being creative gives a voice to society, where they have the ability to say something and communicate a message without having to say anything. 

Considering I wrote the above when I was half asleep, I’m amazed at how much it still rings true and how my project ended up back where I started.

Now for the intervention.

Going into this I had no idea what would happen. I had no idea how many people would engage with it or be willing to create art as well as write about their feelings. After all, I’d already established that one group of my stakeholders aren’t the most open when it comes to sharing feelings. I posted the challenge on my personal Instagram account, as well as my photography Instagram account, alongside a post on Facebook. I also emailed it to people that I had interacted with over the course of my research in case they were interested and wanted to participate.

Feedback:

Someone who took part told me in person that they didn’t see the point in this and that it was just one more thing for them to get done. Another told me that it was the wrong time of year for them but they would be willing to try it when they are less busy with work.

Survey Results:

I find it interesting that the people who took part in this were at the lower end of my target age group for my stakeholders. This could be for a few reasons:
a) the older students didn’t see my challenge because they’re not on social media as much
b) the younger students were willing to try something to see if it helped
c) the students at the lower end of my age range have more free time to take part in something like this
This is a pretty even split between three answers. The number of answers was pretty small however so I would be interested to see what the answers would be with a larger number of participants/respondents. I also think that writing about feelings could be seen as off putting, even if you’re the only one reading it back.
I think this is what I expected. After all, it was just one 10 day challenge and things don’t change overnight, especially when it comes to feeling like an imposter. I would be interested to see the responses after a series of interventions like this to see if over time there was a gradual change.

*Looking at my survey again (the day before my final presentation), I realise I should have asked the gender of the people who took part in my challenge. This would have allowed me to see if this approach would be helpful for working class students in general, or just one group of them. I am slightly annoyed that I overlooked this detail and that I have no time to rectify it.*

Expert Feedback:

I didn’t receive any replies to emails I sent to experts about this intervention, however I did discuss this intervention during a job interview I had. One of the people interviewing me is partnering with Museum as Muck for a research project (it hasn’t been formally announced yet), an organisation that aims to get more working class people in the arts. She was very interested in my research project, especially this intervention, because she said that keeping creative working class students interested in pursuing a career in the arts once they graduate is important and something that she has noticed needs work on. She suggested that I reach out to more arts universities and trial creative interventions such as workshops and challenges such as this one, to encourage students to be creative for fun again, instead of just having to meet deadlines.

Fifth Intervention

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After my last tutorial with David, I switched tack and actually changed my upcoming intervention that was meant to happen the next day. Awful timing, I am aware. But I didn’t want to create an intervention that actually didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Chatting with David about how I find my creative spark whenever I lose it got me thinking about how my methods could help others. After all, my stakeholders are all studying something creative, so harnessing that creativity and using it makes sense.

For someone who hates being in front of the camera, I feel most empowered when I am taking self portraits. And I think it is safe to infer that creative people feel their happiest when they are creating something. I thought back to my BA dissertation about self portraiture as a form of therapy, and found a lot of inspiration.

I decided to create a 10 day challenge. I would have liked to do it for 30 days but there’s a time constraint at play here and I don’t have quite enough time for that. I have shared the link to the challenge on my personal and photography Instagram accounts, as well as on my Facebook page. I also told previous participants in my research about it in case they wanted to take part, although I am hoping to engage with a wider range of stakeholders for this intervention.

I don’t necessarily want to see the artwork – that’s not the important thing here. I know that might sound weird so let me explain. When I create self portraits, or any photography that is just for me, I don’t want to show it anyone. If I show it to people, they’ll invariably have an opinion and the way I feel about the photograph will change. So for this intervention, I want the artwork to stay with the person creating it. And of course they can show it to people if they wish, but I don’t feel comfortable demanding that they send it to me to be displayed on my blog for anyone to see. However, I do want to hear if it changes the participants mindsets and if it has any affect on their feelings of being an imposter.

I realised after setting this challenge that people could just lie to me, however I have aimed to counter this by making the people who have said they are taking part sign something that promises they’re actually going to. It could also feel intrusive to read what they’ve actually written so I plan on asking for feedback both through a survey and through written/spoken feedback.

Creative Interventions as Empowerment

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For my BA Photography dissertation, I wrote 2000 words on photography as a therapeutic tool. From an outside perspective, self portraiture can be seen as narcissistic and vain. Studies have shown that self portraits allow people to get in touch with aspects of themselves that are yet unexplored, and can aid in the process of healing from trauma. There is a reason that art therapy is used a lot by therapists and in prisons.

The practice of the self-portrait can be incredibly empowering. It means using photography to look inside ourselves. To work on our inner world as a way of opening or deepening our unique creative process, which can be developed with any form of artistic expression, or even life itself. To start a dialogue between our thinking mind and our ‘gut’ to draw from an inexhaustible source of meanings which must be expressed. (Nunez, 2009)

In the midst of struggling in my third year of my BA, I created a photo series documenting my journey through 30 days of a depressive episode (see images below).

Today I Left The House For an Hour
I Hate My Body
Felicity – 0 Brain – 1

I am not saying that every working class student who is struggling with imposter syndrome should take self portraits and then they’ll feel better. That would be a rather sweeping and naive statement. But I think that there is a way for universities who specialise in art, to use art to empower their students who come from less represented groups. Maybe that manifests itself in a monthly theme to create work to respond to, or maybe that’s just the invitation to start a personal 30 day challenge accompanied by daily thoughts that are written down.

Nuñez, C. (2009). The self portrait, a powerful tool for self-therapy. European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 11(1), pp.51–61. doi:10.1080/13642530902723157.

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Fourth Intervention

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I decided to accept David’s challenge to move into video and I made a video using quotes from interviews I had already conducted. I watched the video with some of my stakeholders. I wanted to see their reactions to seeing their own words back, and if they found it comfortable/uncomfortable.

https://youtube.com/shorts/85_OY_9ommQ?feature=share

I chose to watch it alongside them to pick up on their body language and facial expressions, as sometimes they are more telling than the words that people say. Whilst I think this intervention was successful I think that I can do better. Using stakeholders that I had already used was in hindsight, a mistake. I think that this would have had more impact if I had shown it to people who hadn’t been involved in my project up to this point. I think I could have also shared this video on social media from the outset, something which I have now done in the hopes of gaining more widespread feedback from people I’ve not yet spoken to.

Because this was my first video, it is very short. I used this video as an experiment into video editing and after this video I taught myself how to use Final Cut Pro so that videos I make moving forwards are longer, more professional and easier to watch.

*Feedback from participants*

“It would have been more powerful to hear our voices back. I think it would have had more impact.”

“I felt uncomfortable because the beads were such happy colours in the video, mixed with not happy statements. But I liked it.”

“A longer video would have been good, but I liked the length of this too. It was like watching a TikTok video.”

Summary

Looking back on this intervention, I don’t feel that it was overly successful. Whilst I shared the quotes from stakeholders, I’m not sure this was a good way to answer my research question, and empower working class students to overcome feelings of being an imposter.

Next Intervention

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I will be the first person to admit that it’s been too long since my last intervention but with David’s help I’ve figured out what I want to do. My last intervention I asked a very small group of stakeholders what ‘working class’ means to them and I was struggling to see what the next iteration would be.

But… Now I have a plan.

Before I conduct interviews that I am going to *hopefully* video, I plan to make a video using quotes from the interviews I’ve already done. I didn’t record the interviews visually, but I do have direct quotes from the stakeholders I’ve spoken to. I plan to hold an online viewing party for this video, just to gauge if that works. This viewing party will be on October 21st and I have sent an invite to 10 stakeholders that I’ve already spoken to.

Why video?

Well, my background is in photography and I could take photos and make an exhibition. But something about letting my stakeholders words be heard feels right to me and I think that if I’m talking to all of these women then I should help their voices be heard. A lot of the stakeholders I’ve spoken to so far have spoken about how they feel invisible and a video is a way to overcome that, potentially. I think that this intervention will help me figure out how exactly my question needs to change/pivot.

Case Study : LAMDA

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Today I saw that LAMDA (London Acadamy of Music and Dramatic Art) has installed QR codes around the school, where students and staff can report microaggressions that they experience in an anonymous way.

I think that something similar could be a viable intervention for my project when we are back on campus, and would be a way of my stakeholders talking about their experiences truly anonymously. Whilst my project is not about microaggressions as such, I think it would be useful to gather data around events that happen on campus that make my stakeholders feel uncomfortable or inferior to their peers. I especially like how LAMDA have asked the people filling this form in to say what they would like to be done about it. If I do a similar intervention then I think it would be interesting to see what my stakeholders would like to see from UAL in terms of things changing or just simply support. An intervention of this sort could also educate universities on why more support for working class students is needed.

I think another good thing about this prospective intervention is that if I asked the gender of the person clicking on the QR code, it would allow me to collect data that is split into genders, which so far has been impossible to find in regards to UAL. It would also allow me to see if one gender is reporting more than another and this could influence my research question.

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/20/report-microaggressions-qr-codes-campus-lamda-students-told/

Second and Third Intervention

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So far in my project I have defined what working class means to me, but I think it is important to find out what it means to my stakeholders too. After all, they are the people that I am trying to help with my project!

So I invited 10 of my stakeholders to meet with me and describe what working class means to them; whether that was verbally, through art or in a written form. I met with 4 online and 6 in person.

From the verbal responses, these are the terms that I wrote down:

There were a lot of repeated words, which I was expecting. However I didn’t expect assumptions to come up as often as it did. I also thought that scapegoat was an interesting word, and it made me think of Chavs by Owen Jones, a book I read as part of my secondary research. This book talks a lot about how the working classes are often used as a political tool to illustrate what is wrong with British society and used as a pawn almost to sway the opinion of the public.

When my stakeholders were observing what each other had written, there was a lot of nodding and agreement. There was also a discussion about certain things, such as the piece of paper that talks about the assumption about not working. I find this very interesting as we were talking about the working class and working is in the name. But after thinking about it, there is an assumption in society that a lot of working class people rely on benefits so I can see why this came up. I think this points to a problem with the way the working classes are represented in popular culture and the way that this perpetuates stereotypes.

Because half of this intervention was online, I decided to send a survey to everyone who participated, with a list of all the responses (except the pictures, I now realise) and ask them to check the boxes next to the words that they connect with most. However, no one had responded to my survey at the time of writing this blog post! I regret not doing this in person as I would have received instant responses and would have gained more feedback which would inform the next intervention iteration. I plan to send follow up emails which will hopefully mean that I get some survey responses and therefore some more feedback and insight from my stakeholders.

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Update 1st September 2022

Six of the participants of my intervention responded to my follow up survey and I found it very interesting that the words that all 6 of these people connected with the most was assumptions, closely followed by stereotyped, seen as lacking ambition, hardworking and underprivileged. I think moving forward I want to dive deeper into what assumptions are being made about these working class students specifically at university, and who is making these assumptions.

Why My First Intervention Failed But Also Succeeded

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It’s been a few days since the tutorial where I presented my first intervention and I’ve had plenty of time to absorb the feedback and to realise for myself why it wasn’t a good intervention.

Firstly, it didn’t answer my research question. And that’s kind of the point! A student creating a community of support for other working class students isn’t the university supporting those students. And whilst a support network is potentially needed, this isn’t the way to do it. If I wanted to progress down this road, I would need to change my research question. And right now I’m very happy with my question and it’s something that resonates with me.

Secondly, anonymity is important. If students need a safe place to vent, Instagram isn’t the place to do it. Somewhere like Reddit or The Student Room, or even the anonymous feature in Facebook groups is much more successful for this. This isn’t to say that Instagram couldn’t be used in this context, but I don’t see that it could be used as a safe space to be open about experiences and feelings.

What Are Anonymous Posts in Facebook Groups And How To Make Them - Online Group Success

And lastly, an Instagram account of this sort could be very emotionally harmful to the person or persons running the account. An inbox full of potentially shocking or emotional experiences is something that could be triggering to the account owner. I think for this to be something that wasn’t harmful each message would need a trigger or content warning. This would ensure that no one got triggered by submissions to the page and it would mean that everyone’s emotional wellbeing would be prioritised.

However, I learnt a lot from this short lived Instagram account.

I learnt that people need a place to vent, and that seeing other’s experiences makes people feel less alone. I learnt that Instagram accounts of this sort get a lot of inappropriate messages, of people wanting to question the truthfulness of people’s experiences and calling them liars, just because that thing hasn’t happened to them.

I also learnt that the experiences of female working class students, whilst obviously individual to each person, are largely the same. This leads me to believe that a systemic change is needed, so that these experiences aren’t being had by the majority of female students from the working classes.

Small First Intervention

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Given that I changed my question so close to the deadline for our first intervention to be done, I decided to start super small.

As a result of surveys I conducted I found out that a lot of female students from working class backgrounds feel as though they are not part of a community. So I started an Instagram account – I wanted to see if this was a method of building a community that my stakeholders would engage with.

From conducting this intervention and receiving feedback, I realise that this doesn’t answer my research question. I am focusing on how universities themselves can better support students, not how students can support students. I also think Instagram isn’t a viable place to build this kind of community due to the lack of anonymity. If I were to move forward with building a community, it would need to be on a platform that can be more anonymous or a secure safe place. Maybe a private Instagram page or a closed Facebook group?

Either way, I think this was a successful intervention. Not in the way I wanted but I think the feedback I received gave me a kick to hone in on my question more for my next intervention. If one of my later interventions goes down the community building lines, then I think I have learnt how not to do it!