As part of the thematic analysis process I decided to write this reflection to bring back my own memories and insights while I’m about to familiarise myself with the data.
The plan was to take a walk with my students, as in the style of the Guy Dabord and the Situationist’s ‘Derive’. . but also inspired by a workshop described by Page (2018) where students were asked to consciously engage with a journey they do regularly and collect artefacts.
Since I thought it might help students focus on what was happening while they walked I made a worksheet including some open tasks encouraging sensory engagement, eg note down three smells, describe three surfaces you touch…. I also added a grid to enter sketches, giving them the idea of collecting many small things, notes or sketches.
The walk was part of a bigger session. I decided that the best way to approach the research project was to integrate it into a normal Saturday club session. So my questionnaire would be part of the reflection questions we normally do, the walk was part of a South London gallery trip session. I thought this would be a good flow from exploring the surrounding area and streets, to then exploring the exhibition which included works by Rita Keegan including smell, visual, and sound.
The students were 14-15 years of age so I had devised a way that we’d stay altogether and no-one go missing. I enjoyed planning this and writing up the task sheets. I printed the sheets in 5 different colours and had three copies in each colour, this was a way to get students into groups of three according to the colour sheets they were given, and the idea would be to have a leading group of three on the meandering walk every 5 – 10 minutes, who would take us somewhere to pause and explore, then we’d be led by the next group, and so on. So the teachers would not lead apart from when we had to get to the gallery or back to college. The rest of the time we would relinquish control and be led around by the students with the rest of the group.
I had made a detailed plan for the morning but allowed some flexibility as I knew I’d have to adjust things. I was feeling lucky because there was a dry weather forecast.
We met at Wilson Road building, I had a student Ambassador assisting me. We gave out the paper worksheets and I gave a short introduction talking about mindfulness, the ‘derive’ and the journey being the important part and not the end destination.
We set out, first pausing at a churchyard down the end of the road. I knew there were places in the area that would be great to explore, but it was important to hold back and not to advise on this, since it was meant to be a journey led and discovered by the students. It was more about happening on things.
A feeling of joy started to creep up on me while we were walking. Partly because the plan, which took a lot of thinking and working out seemed to be going ok. Partly because I also was enjoying being present with it. Some of the group were excited to take the lead a few others were tentative and not really sure what to do with their power, but everyone seemed engaged and together in our endeavour.
There were some significant moments I remember. We spent a bit of time in the churchyard at the beginning of the walk, a group had gathered right at the back around a dustbin, I walked up to see what they were doing, they were looking at flyer stickers stuck to the top of a dustbin. They were very excited composing photographs, a bit later one student told me that he would use some of the images he was collecting for a school project about environment. I thought this important, since I wanted to create an open activity that could inspire ideas. These images/stories didn’t get recorded in my data however. which has led me to the conclusion that I needed to do this once in order to learn about how to do it better a second time around.
Another moment was one group led by a particular student who seemed on a mission to get us somewhere, I had to ask him to find a place for us to pause as it was going on too long and would run into the next groups time, around this time we stopped in an intersection of roads there were flats and houses, it was very grey and urban. A group of boys had been picking small purple flowers, I’m not sure where they got them from but since it was late November it seemed like they were from a planter, (I had made one rule not to collect anything that belonged to anyone, and there is a law against picking wild flowers), but in the spirit of the walk I thought I had to let things go (within reason), they were all standing together looking at their flowers.
Despite the dry forecast it was actually light drizzle and was very cold, so I was concerned that students would be less willing to take part. However that didn’t turn out to be the case. Though there was a lot of talk about the cold, things went ahead and students were enthusiastically engaged. At one point it did start to rain more heavily so I decided to get us to the gallery and continue the last group’s walk on the way back.
Looking back and having first reviewed some of the data, I’m wondering whether this activity led the students into a similar way of collecting information when we got to the gallery and If this would have been different if we had gone in cold. My impression is that it did give a more focused approach. It all nicely tied together since the exhibition by Rita Keegan involved an installation that was not only visual but included smells and audio.
On the last group’s walk we ended up in a playground at the back of a small park and they hung out and played, which was also great, again I had to confront my own assumption that this wasn’t proper work and they’d lost focus. I appreciate this as another important part of our journey. Later I noticed that one student had mentioned it in their reflection, which reinforced this for me.
I think the walk was successful though with hindsight I would have put a few more things in place to be able to collect better quality data, not that it was bad, just that I realise there is opportunity to do it better.
References
Page, T. (2018) Teaching and Learning with Matter Arts 7, no 4:82
Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York, Zone Books.