Blog Entry: 10/10
Today we really got into the research for the first time. We started by making freeze frames in pairs about the aims of Participatory Action Research. We started with an image of traditional research and then moved to an image of PAR. The audience closed their eyes in between so they were presented with two images. This exercise was based on Image Theatre which comes from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.
After this we went into two groups to do a storytelling exercise. Each member of the group had to speak for 2 minutes in response to prompts like ‘a moment where you experienced injustice’ or ‘a concern for our generation.’ The story told had to be something that affected the storyteller directly. After each story the group had a moment each to respond to the story – perhaps they might share a similar experience, ask a question, or add a point to the point made. People shared all kinds of stories – from experiences of hate crime, to families being moved out of their neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, the facilitators were scribbling as fast as they could, trying to get key themes or points from the story down on sheets of coloured paper. By the end of the exercise the floor was covered in sheets of paper, and the group were tasked with trying to group the quotes and stick them on the wall to show crossovers or connections.
The result was powerful. We sat back and looked up at a wall of our experiences; of injustices relating to race, gender, sexuality, religion, economic situation. The wall told a story of living in a precarious economy, how that puts pressures on our families which are transferred on to their kids, and how people struggle with their mental health ‘in the ghetto.’ The wall set a scene where there is rising hate crime, where ‘people don’t care about the right things;’ the government and people in power turn a blind eye to the things which we feel are important, and we don’t feel able to challenge that. Two information systems featured heavily in the wall – social media, and the education system. A large section of the wall relayed the clash between being yourself, and doing well at school – how it feels that you cannot succeed in the world unless you conform to white middle class ideals.
Some of the comments threw up interesting tensions, for example, ‘my biggest fear is that I won’t do well at school, it’s my only way out’ directly contradicted with ‘school makes robots,’ or ‘school doesn’t teach us how to be adults.’
In some ways what we created was beautiful, but it also felt a bit overwhelming. We wanted to get closer to what we are going to research but it felt like a chaos of ideas was opened up and everything feels really important!
Take Back The Power 