Tag Archives: intervention

Feedback from Fifth Intervention

Interventions, My Project, , ,

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.

Fourth Intervention

Interventions, My Project, ,

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

Inspiration, Interventions, My Project, , , , ,

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

Interventions, My Project, , , , , , ,

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

Interventions, , ,

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!

Lack of Photography as an Intervention

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In January 2020, two months before the pandemic hit, Vogue Italia published an issue of their magazine, in which they produced no new photography. They did this to draw attention to the vast number of resources that just one issue of their magazine uses :

  • One hundred and fifty people involved.
  • About twenty flights and a dozen or so train journeys.
  • Forty cars on standby.
  • Sixty international deliveries.
  • Lights switched on for at least ten hours non-stop, partly powered by gasoline-fueled generators.
  • Food waste from the catering services.
  • Plastic to wrap the garments.
  • Electricity to recharge phones, cameras 

I’m not great with numbers but even I can work out that this is a lot, especially when you consider that there are 26 different editions of Vogue monthly, and around 80 mainstream fashion magazines globally per month.

vouge-italia-illustrations

I think this intervention was partially successful – it worked because it drew attention to how wasteful editorial shoots can be and the impact that they have on the planet. It allowed the industry and consumers to see that is actually possible to produce an issue of a magazine without new photographs. I think another success from this intervention was that artists were showcased on a Vogue front cover, which is a big deal. It allowed their art to be seen by people who maybe would never have seen it otherwise.

However fashion needs photography so this was never going to be sustainable going forwards. I think this worked as a one off intervention but there is not obvious path forwards from it. Nowhere did they state their next steps, apart from saying that their packaging was now recyclable.

Another problem I have with this intervention is that it seemed performative – everything went back to normal the next month. So in actuality, Vogue Italia drew attention to something that people had previously been blissfully unaware of. This was now something that their readers knew about. Whereas before they might have speculated about how many flights were taken per issue, now they had a concrete number to think about. I am curious as to whether drawing attention to this impacted the number of subscribers to their magazine in any way. Vogue subscribers are at an all time high but would there have been more without drawing attention to this issue?

If an intervention occurs and no changes occur because of it, what was the point to creating the intervention in the first place. I think it would have been interesting for Vogue Italia to publish their findings from creating this issue – did they receive positive/negative social media comments? Was there criticism within the fashion industry? Did they get praised? How did the photographers who would normally have been used feel? The whole purpose to an intervention is to change something, and analyse the data from doing so. Maybe they did this internally, but I wish they would have shared this with the general public/

https://time.com/5760459/vouge-italia-illustrations-photoshoots-sustainability/