Working with archived materials, and archiving new materials

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Working with archived materials,and archiving
new materials

• Dawn Lyon (University of Kent)
• and Graham Crow (University of Southampton)
• Collaborative Methods in Community Research
• University of Nottingham, 11 April 2011

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What well do in this session

• Presentation Describe the Living and Working on
  Sheppey project and the original project it
  relates to
• Discuss the materials we are working with and how
  we accessed or collected them
• Talk about our experience of collaborative
  working with a small community organisation and
  volunteers
• Exercise Ask you to work in groups to consider
  some samples of our material
• Discussion Explore the issues raised

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The original study 1

• Ray Pahl headed team of researchers to explore
  different aspects of life and work on the Isle of
  Sheppey in north Kent in the late 1970s and early
  1980s
• He was especially interested in the ways in which
  work might be both paid and unpaid, formal and
  informal
• The study found evidence of social polarisation
  between work-rich and work-poor households
• Published as Divisions of Labour (1984)

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The original study 2

• The research was based on mixed methods
• historical documentary research
• survey data on households and on employers
• interviews, including oral histories
• ethnographic observations
• visual methods
• Material is now archived at UK Data Archive
  (University of Essex)

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Context Location of Sheppey
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Map of Sheppey
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The original study 3

• Pahls project was a community study made up of a
  number of sub-projects
• One sub-project was about the occupational
  community that arose from the presence of a
  single large employer at Sheerness Naval Dockyard
• This brought people together in shared sense of
  purpose and belonging something which was lost
  after the dockyard closure in 1960
• Another sub-project was future-oriented 142
  essays were written by school leavers in May 1978
  (mainly 16-year-olds, 90 boys, 52 girls),
  imagining themselves towards the end of their
  lives and looking back

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The re-study 1

• Funding South East Coastal Communities Project
  (SECC) http//www.coastalcommunities.org.uk/
• Dates June 2009-September 2010 March-May 2011
• People involved
• Universities Kent (Dawn Lyon, Peter Hatton, Tim
  Strangleman, Clive Arundell), Southampton (Graham
  Crow), Essex (UK Data Archive)
• Community groups Blue Town Heritage Centre
  (Jenny Hurkett, Alice Young), Swale CVS, Sheppey
  Matters
• Volunteers from the Blue Town Heritage Centre
  and beyond
• Artists Tea http//web.mac.com/p.n.murray/www.
  teaweb.org/Home.html

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(Some of) the project team outside the Blue Town
Heritage Centre, Sheerness
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The re-study 2 oral histories

• Focus on memories of work connected to dockyard
  an addition to Pahls occupational community
  interviews (n8, including 1 woman)
• 33 new interviews, including 8 women
• Half of the interviewees worked in the dockyard
  (including 2 women)
• 8 have memories of the dockyard without directly
  working there
• 7 of the interviewees worked in Blue Town in
  shops (butchers and newsagents), hotel,
  launderette etc

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The re-study 3 oral histories

• Interviewers included members of Blue Town
  Heritage Centre, mature students, other members
  of the public
• Recruited through local advertising
• Often motivated by interest in specific
  historical times or stories
• Tensions between interview styles, including ways
  of listening
• Benefits of local knowledge of interviewers

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The re-study 4 imagination

• Re-analysis of young peoples imagined futures
• Allows previously undiscussed themes contained in
  the essays to be explored, e.g. health
• Opportunity to discuss new themes with Ray Pahl
  directly
• New research 106 essays collected in 2009-10
• Comparison of 2 cohorts now possible

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The re-study 5 imagination

• Worked with local school and youth groups
• Difficulty of ensuring consistency of instruction
• Lack of appeal of essay-writing to young people
  today vs methodological need to generate
  comparable data
• School-leaving age more variable in 2009-10 so
  difficult to access group in similar relation to
  future
• Searched without success for 1978 essay writers!
• Material provides important counter to critics of
  young people as lacking aspiration

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Opening access

• Project developed website (not yet live) to be
  dynamic archive of oral histories, essays, visual
  and other materials on living and working on
  Sheppey
• Artists, Tea, produced DVD on Blue Town High
  Street - brought together memories of older
  people (voices) with old photographs of
  buildings, imagined future of buildings drawn by
  young people, and present-day footage along the
  street

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Exercise

• What do the essays make you think about the
  following themes and issues?
• Place and belonging
• Gender relations
• Aspiration
• Viewpoint of young people
• Ethics
• The usefulness of imagination as a method

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Reflections

• I like to watch the kids play across the road in
  the park. It gives me a sense of satisfaction,
  not that they realise it mind. There too locked
  up in their own fantasies to a dam anyway, shut
  away in their private worlds of solitude, free
  from the arms of reality. They dont know how
  lucky they are. But lets face it, they dont care
  anyway, well why the hell should they? Its not
  their turn to suffer not yet. They will realise,
  as I did all those years ago, that time is not
  the illusion that they have created within
  themselves, when it can free its self, it will
  burn them first, then run away. Maybe I was like
  them once not so free though, I think they have
  love, neighbours, perhaps a little honesty. Me?
  Well I was alone, unafraid yes but alone, and it
  hated me and I it, because like time it burned
  me. It still does.
• I had contemplated suicide. It was away, as I
  had explained to a friend, she begged me to
  reconsider, I did. I loved her.
• My first job was meaningless and obscure
  Packing crates, that was it. Hundreds of them,
  day after day. Straw, cups, straw saucers and my
  hands wept with the sweat of my labours and the
  offensiveness that surrounded them. There was,
  again, no satisfaction, no streak of content,
  biting me, no memories able to save me, and I
  sacrificed my last ounce of sanity for a measly
  20 pounds a week. Hell, I earnt it. Those crates
  were so heavy, a burden, took two of us and a lot
  of stress and strain to shift them, but we
  managed.
• That it really. Not much is it. Those kids
  playing now are tomorrows losers, but theyve
  time to work things out, think and plan ahead.
  They have got a chance its a dam shame really.
  This is, perhaps, my last message to the
  world, and, like before, no-one has heard.
• Boy 1978/17