PhD Fieldwork – the Realities

Over the last year I have been working on my methods chapter and reading about amazing work that other people have done with different communities. I will leave the actual details to my chapter, but there is a underlying problem with a lot of the fieldwork accounts that are out there…they lie about what it is really like! They are perfectly documented and amazingly executed methods where participants are on time (or even turn up at all) and engage fully with the project from start to finish with no hitches. There is no chasing of appointments or survey responses. There is no mess, no one has better things to do than come along to an information session or a museum visit.

My project has been some crazy Venn diagram of when people are available, when I am available (and not at work), when the museum is open, when they don’t forget, when the children are alert and engaged, when everyone is not hungry, when it is not organised too far in the future, when it is organise with enough notice, if it isn’t raining…in fact, I am surprised that I have managed to get any families to visit the museum with me sometimes! Don’t get me wrong, I love the people and the families I work with, but they have real lives that don’t put my project at the top of their priorities list (and it shouldn’t be anyway). So when I spend an hour waiting outside the museum for a group, I don’t actually mind.

In the long run there is a reason for an absence and it’s not because they didn’t want to come.

Then there is the methods. It’s great asking people to take photos with you. In the past I have used disposable cameras and taken them away to be developed. This has it’s own problems of children not knowing how they work (this was hilarious the first time – “where can I see the photo when I am taking it?” and “How can I delete ones I don’t like?”), fingers over the view finders and over winding by the more zealous participants.  It all leads to no data. I was not (and am still not) in a position to buy lovely digital cameras to give out to families. So I asked my families to use their phones and share pictures with me. Perfect! They took loads going around the museum of each other, of things they liked or made them laugh…but the actual act of sharing those gets more complicated. You get a “yeah, sure” and one photo or two. This then makes the next step of discussing those photos more complicated because there are no photos, and the getting together to talk about these, well see Venn diagram problem.

The above issues all happen after you have found a group to work with. They are out there, but sometimes the gatekeepers can be tricky. However, if you go and have a chat and a cuppa about your project and how you can help them it all turns out lovely. People genuinely want to help!

I am halfway through my fieldwork and originally I had planned it to be one academic year with one group of people. At the end of the summer term the group fell apart for a number of reasons, and I lost regular contact quite quickly. I wondered what I was going to do as I wasn’t finished and it seemed a bit of an imposition to ask for further meetings – they had other things on their minds. I potentially have a new group now. So a contrast maybe, but also a new start with some of the lessons learnt from last year. I also have the assurance that this crazy process is “normal”. So if it is normal, please please write about it! Let’s not let other researchers and students feel like they are failing because the course of research does not run smooth.

 

Museums & Wellbeing

So apparently there is a Museums and Wellbeing Week.  This is quite exciting for me as my PhD has taken a wellbeing turn (see below) and now I find a week where museums are promoting wellbeing.

Museums & Wellbeing Week Information

Anyway, I have been working hard on my PhD to the point where I have put in to present at two conferences this year. One with a poster and one with a Pecha-Kucha.  To do this I had to communicate my PhD topic in a more academic fashion than my blog post about is earlier this year.  So I got my head around my literature review plan, and wrote this:

I am exploring how museums can better engage with audiences of diverse communities, such as the communities in Leicester.  Drawing on the work of Chatterjee & Noble (2013), I will be looking at how local museums can better support local communities by creating a sense of belonging.   This will include building on the museums inclusivity in relation to identity and race (Crang & Tolia-Kelly, 2010).

Initially I will be looking into the experiences of family groups from the local Leicester area in the local authority museums focusing on their emotional and sensory experiences (Roberts, 2013; Munro, 2014) to better understand the senses of well-being and belonging in the museum.   I hope that this will be a basis on which museums can better represent their local communities and contribute to wellbeing and create an inclusive museum.

This is what I have submitted to see if anyone wants to hear about my research, and it has been successful.  The poster submission deadline passed and today I found out that I shall be presenting my poster at the Museums in the Global Contemporary Conference in Leicester in April.  The other deadline is the beginning of March so I have a little wait for that one.

References:
Chatterjee, H. and Noble, G. (2013) Museums, health and well-being Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate
Crang, M. and Tolia-Kelly, D.P. (2010) Nation, race and affect: senses and sensibilities at National Heritage sites Environment and planning A., 42 (10) 2315
Munro, E. (2014) Doing emotion work in museums: reconceptualising the role of community engagement practitioners Museums and Society March 2014 12(1) 44-60
Roberts, R.C., (2013) Questions of museum essence: Being, Being With, and finding connection in conversation Museums and Social Issues 8:1&2 pp. 89-101

NCCPE Engage Conference – day two – afternoon #engage_2014

My last workshop is all about interactive sensory objects and people with learning disabilities. I am looking forward to it as it hopefully will link in with some of my research as well.

Www.sensoryobjects.com

Their project began with the Access to Heritage group in Liverpool and creating a sensory experience in Speak Hall. They embraced all senses, the sensory box creaked like an old door and smelt like the Middle Ages, there was a cushion that told a story when you stroked it.
Their second group was based at MERL and a group form Reading College. They created a mooing boot! This was in response to the fact that MERL involves animals but doesn’t have any. (The mooing boot is still mooing!)
They had to adapt some children’s toys they wanted to work with to work with larger adult fingers.
Their current project is with the Tower Project and the British Museum. They use visual prompts to remind people to use all their senses when they are visiting. These are strips of paper with an eye, nose, mouth, hand and ear on them.
They are developing a set of cartoons to help everyone experience museums like this… Note to self, leave contact details with this group!
At the BM they concentrated on the Enlightenment Gallery, in there you are only allowed to touch the Rosetta Stone replica and the objects on the handling table between certain times. They challenged the group to choose and object, they used the audio guide to help them. The Tower Group has a range of people with disabilities, some of which affect the senses. Each person chose and object and researched it. The BM have linked this research to the objects on their website as well. The research includes all the senses. They came up with the idea of creating speaking labels for the museum, but they would also show images. They then looked at using materials to recreate the objects and looked at the materials used, how they smelt. How the would sound, this was all put into a “box” that on pushing a different button created a different sense. I am going to take a photo as I am finding it quite difficult to describe how amazing this is! Pics to be uploaded later.

There are lots of things to get involved in here! Switch boxes, squishy circuits with conductive playdoh and not so squishy circuits. They have adapted circuits and made them easier for people to use and work out how they would like their box to switch on.

I am actually not sure I am doing this project any justice!

One busy day at work… Eight Mummies and Wicked Bodies.

Yesterday was a long and tiring day and had it’s ups and downs. I went to London to represent the University at an Access to HE Fair.  The incredibly early morning and fair went well.  We spoke to a lot of potential students who were tkaing the Access to HE route into university and told them about our courses, finances, what it is like and tried to encourage them to aim high.   There was also the obligatory comparison of our pens against other universities freebies.  That is not really what I wanted to write about though.

I had some time after the fair to go into the British Museum and have a look at the new Eight Mummies, Eight Lives, Eight Stories exhibition.   I was mightily impressed.  The researchers at the BM have used CT scanning to reveal the inner workings of 8 mummies from different eras without having to use invasive methods. The presentation of the findings were clear and detailed.  Each mummy has at least one screen showing the CT scan revealing the under wrappings or internal organs with pointers of what to look for and why.  Some even have touch activated winding wheels that means you can control how fast the outer layers disappear and show what is hidden underneath.   The attention to detail is amazing, even down to the 3D printing of the funerary ornaments wrapped amoungst the cloth on the Egyptian mummy.   Only one thing bothered me.  The mummies are in there with the CT scanning images, but you get transfixed with the shiney technology and have to remember that the original artefacts and people are still there too.

I had a little time left over to managed to get into the Witches and Wicked Bodies exhibition.  This is in the prints and drawings gallery and comprises of woodcuts, etchings, sketches and lithographs on the subject, organised in chronological order.   I took a sneaky picture of one print…

The orderings of the display allows for the progression of ideas and themes to show through.  The 15th Century prints include fantastical beasts a la Bosch (sadly no Bosch in there though).  It occured to me as I went through the exhibition that many artists stopped using fantastical beasts, I wonder if this was because all beasts in the world had been discovered…   On the whole though, I loved this exhibition.

Ok two sneaky pictures!

Following that I headed back to the train station.  Now here is my rant about yesterday.
The British are famed for their queuing – except when it comes to getting on a train.  This particular train was late, but even before it had arrived a herd had formed that was clammering to get onto a train that wasn’t there.  People were slipping past each other as it wasn’t a queue to be respected but a battle to be first on the train.  The train was over full, and there were a lot of reserved seats (in fact all of them seemed to be reserved). The train filled and there was a push to get to a seat whether reserved or not.  People were pushing past each other, dragging bags and generally being incredibly rude to each other.  It was absolutely awful and then made worse by a lady putting her suitcase onto my broken toe.

I just don’t understand this behaviour, we don’t do it on buses, so why trains!?!

Anyway I got home to the friendly face of the cat eventually.

Look how far I have come!

Working for a university at this time of year raises quite a few discussions in the office about qualificaitons, exam results and degrees.  Combined with a friend who has decided to embark on a PhD herself It got me thinking about what I have done and where I am now.    Warning:  this is quite a long post.

Going back to my school days, I was a bright kid.  I performed well in my GCSEs, I got nine all together, all As and Bs.  I didn’t do so well in my A-levels though coming out with 2 1/2 in the end.  In this day and age this is not enough to get me into university!  But I got in to do a BA in Art and Art History at Aberystwyth, so it wasn’t a problem, it didn’t even get mentioned.

I stumbled through my degree, I dropped the Art part and carried on with the Art History bit.  I scraped a 2:2.  I could have been more engaged, but there were a lot of interesting things going on at university.    I had a degree and remember once thinking about a masters back then, but dismissing it quickly due to money and only having a 2:2.

I thought that is where I would stop.  I needed to earn money, got a job and ended up in a profession entirely unrelated to my interests.   Then the most amazing thing happened.  I was made redundant, with a fairly chunky redundancy package.    All of a sudden I was thinking about what I really wanted to do rather than what I needed to do and it was brilliant.

I volunteered at the local museum and applied to the best MA in Museum Studies in the country.  Question was, after a nine year gap, experience in an entirely different profession and a 2:2, would they let me enrol on their course…   The answer was “write us an essay to show us you can do it.”  So I did, and they let me on.

I worked hard on my MA, but in hindsight I could have worked harder.  I had a new goal though, I wanted to do a PhD.   I had an idea and everything.   Getting onto the course had also meant a change in career as well and I was working in a more community based area.    I was going to combine all of these things into one!  It would be amazing!

I finished my MA, my average being less than 1% under a merit.    I was proud of myself.  I applied for a PhD, I was turned down.  To be fair the feedback I got was invaluable.   It does seem a little extreme but I was told to get published, get more research experience and apply again.    I was heartbroken.  Then I pulled myself together and worked out a solution.

Entirely by chance an academic publisher emailed me and said they wanted to publish my MA dissertation.  I looked them up, checked the deal they were offering and went for it.  2 whole copies have been sold to date (thats is about 2 years)!  But it is published! And in the University Library too!  So getting published….tick.

Me and my work in the library

I applied for a masters by research (MRes), these masters degrees are all about research methods with a much greater focus on the final dissertation and putting your research methods into action.   To be quite honest this was exactly what I had needed.  I had no idea about research methods until completing this.  The training you are given on standard masters degrees barely touches the surface of what you can do with research.   My marks were coming back as merits and distinctions.    So, more experience in research methods….tick.

On top of that, I had an academic poster displayed at a conference, attended other conferences (actually an important part of learning more) became a Trustee of our local museums and had gained valuable experience of working with museums and audiences.   People were starting to listen to me when I had an opinion on these things as well.

Working on the MRes dissertation had given me a new idea for a PhD project that is much more innovative and hasd a much better grounding in theory and methodology.   I was going to wait to apply for a PhD, get my proposal completely right and take my time, but potential funding applications came up.  I didn’t rush the process and once again the School of Museum Studies gave me loads of advice, they liked the idea and the potential outcomes.

I got an interview, I answered the questions.  I got turned down.    I really wanted to do my PhD with them!  I went for feedback.   There was nothing wrong with my proposal, I was just in the wrong place.  They didn’t have anyone who could really supervise it as the research methods could pose problems, I wanted to work with toddlers.   It felt a bit like I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this.

So I resorted to posting about my sadness on Facebook, where some wise PhD student friends said “find the supervisor who will take you on, don’t think about which university they are at or which department they are in.”    So I thought I would give that a go.  I emailed a potential supervisor who specialised in working with film and photography in research.  She emailed back quickly but had just relocated to Australia so couldn’t take me on.  She did recommend someone to me though.     I emailed them, fifteen minutes later I had a supervisor!

The whole official application process took another six nervewracking weeks, but now I am actually going to start this PhD.    It is with another university, but I think that will make me work harder.  They don’t know me, I have to prove myself.

Learning curves

So, today I did my first day as what felt like a real researcher. I have conducted interviews before, asking a series of questions of various people in various situations, but today felt different. I had to get a proper buy-in from my participants. I managed to get four families to agree to take photographs for me during their visits to the Ashmolean. Three were happy to be interviewed at a later date (two within the weekend and one over the summer when I can pop back) and one wanted to be interviewed on the day. This is where the learning curve came in:
– getting camera developed within an hour is fine, provided you don’t have a deadline.
– taking 20 minutes out to go and fetch the cameras invariably leads to missing people dropping cameras off and arranging set times for the interviews.
So, I have an interview completed, one for Monday and two that require arrangement. I am hoping that I achieve all four interviews. If not, it is not a problem as long as I achieve two interviews which is my self determined target for any museum at which I am researching.

Other things I have encountered today were things such as a lovely man with five hats on, that if you are doing anything with some sort of authority in a museum people will ask you things and most people who go to the Ashmolean are relatively well dressed (I am not sure why as there isn’t really a dress code in museums). One of the other things I noticed was that toddlers adore revolving doors. After watching a few parents with toddlers (and I have to admit there were quite a few who had come in to meet other parents with toddlers) that a toddler led tour of a museum could be an amazing thing. Just follow the direction they are pointing in and see what exciting thing they have seen. One father seemed to be doing just that and he looked like he was having an enormous amount of fun!

Many of the visitors seemed genuinely interested in my research whether they fitted my requirements or not. The museum staff were lovely, helpful and welcoming.

I will try and work out some of the logistical issues before my next museum, but at least I now know that it can be done and this dissertation will have data!

Cultural Heritage? Banksy and the Elgin Marbles

It seems that the shoe is on the other foot. The Banksy Mural that has been removed from the wall of a Poundland shop in North London is up for auction in America. The auctioneer says it is all above board, enquiries have been made and the sale is legitimate. I believe him. No self respecting art auction house would put themselves in the position of selling stolen Banksys. The legitimacy of the sale is not really the point though. Banksy creates street art, not commercial pieces designed to be sold to the highest bidder. He appeals to the general public to spread political messages or just entertain. Marc Shiller uses the phrase “location specific commentary” to describe the works and also this:

“I’m not buying the argument that because Banksy put a piece in public it gives a person the right to steal and resell it,” he said. “When he is on the street he is giving his work to the public to enjoy for a day, a month, a year or more. His position has been that if you take his work out of its context it’s not his work any more, it’s no longer a Banksy.”

From the Guardian

Apparently the auction house has received threatening phone calls and messages about their involvement in the sale of this piece of work. There is outrage, there are also secrets, the seller has not made themselves public. This is within the seller’s right to remain anonymous, but by doing so is creating a furore about who they are and what right they had to remove the mural. For all we know this is Banksy himself trying to prove a point.

Maybe, though we should be looking at this from a different viewpoint. Is this how the people of Greece felt when the Elgin Marbles were removed and put into a museum for the British public to see? Did they wonder who had the right to remove these works that they had access to and could see on a daily basis if they wanted to and take them to another country? I am sure they did (and still do). According to the British authorities all the paperwork was in order and legitimate, nothing untoward had been done. I am not going to go into the minutiae of the Elgin Marbles case, but I want to highlight the longstanding debate about having cultural objects in museums.

I felt that my understanding of this issue was highlighted when I saw Henry VIII’s armour in the Met Museum in New York. I knew it was in there, I had seen it on a (admittedly trashy) tv show. However, when I stood there in front of it, I had a feeling of resentment. Why was it in this museum? What did they know about Henry VIII? Why wasn’t it in the Tower of London or at the Royal Armouries? It is housed in a room with armour from all over the world, but I didn’t have the same feeling about the other pieces in there. It was because it felt personal. I then realised that I was a little more enlightened about how other people must feel about the Elgin Marbles, and now the Banksy.

There are many objects that are in museums that are from other cultures, that must have a specific meaning to peoples and cultures. These objects are part of what makes museums places to go, all part of the experience. I don’t have an answer to the long standing debate, I am a supporter of original objects in museums, but also support the legitimate acquisition of these objects. I just feel that everyone should see something in a museum that gives them the feeling that it is theirs in order to better understand this debate.

Enthusiasm about museums

After Christmas and a slow start to January, I think I am getting back into a routine with my dissertation. I have made myself try and review a journal article every weekday. On top if this I have been busy organising my museums. I think I have cracked it now! I decided I needed to actually go and speak with some people to help me get on with it, so I took a day trip to Oxford. This was the best idea ever!

Meeting my contacts at the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers, not only helped me plan the logistics of the study, but also helped me to articulate the project and my goals. It gave me the opportunity to explain in person what I wanted to do, how I thought I was going to do it and that I wasn’t entirely sure of the exact outcomes yet, but that was part of the design. The feedback and discussion provided an opportunity to highlight some of the gaps in my plans and create a constructive platform to fix them. I found that discussing the project gave me more confidence in it. My main worry is now that the photos actually come out!

The trip to Oxford also gave me a fun day out. I spent about two hours in the Pitt Rivers Museum and four in the Ashmolean. As it was a Thursday and not a holiday, I had some of the Ashmolean galleries to myself. I went on a tour and had a chat with the museum assistants too. After a tough day (very tough on the feet anyway) I met a friend in the Bird and Baby and had a filling dinner. I am looking forward to going back for a few days and getting the interviews done.

Since I completed what could be termed as a site visit, I have had a surge in enthusiasm, ideas and focus. I now have an excellent selection of fee charging and free museums, run by local authorities, independently or nationally, and my first test subjects visitors are taking photos on Saturday. I have even got a rough plan of the structure of my dissertation. However, I am now not sure that 30,000 words is going to be enough…

Raising funds…

Apologies for the long gap in posting.  I nearly posted while I was on holiday in New York about this, but then I remembered I was on holiday for a reason!

While we were enjoying the Big Apple over the festive season, we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I did my homework before we went.  I noticed that the Met has “recommended” entrance fees.  They point out that all of their exhibits are free once you are in the museum and could visitors please pay the full recommended amount in order for them to be able to provide these at no extra cost.  I thought this was an interesting viewpoint compared to some UK museums (I am being quite general here, there could be UK museums that use this approach).   The Met goes as far to recommend an amount for senior citizens, students and children, in the same way other museums would lay out their prices.    I think I like the honesty of the Met for this, it doesn’t explain every reason for a fee, but there is an explanation.  Before we went one thing did cross my mind; how many people actually paid full price or had the confidence to say no?  How would that work?

Once we were there I found out.  I also got annoyed with a UK visitor behind us in the queue (but didn’t do anything or say anything as you just don’t in these situations).  The other visitor had not done his homework and was kicking up a fuss as a tour guide had told him it would be “free like the British Museum”. There was no consideration of where the funding came from for the Met and how that may be different from the British Museum.  I was starting to get a little tired of the comments about how the British Museum could let people in for free why couldn’t the Met, when we got to the counter.  The admissions lady was welcoming and gave a full explanation of the recommended fees, but stressed that we didn’t have to pay the full amount if we didn’t want to.  It was a no pressure conversation, she double checked we were happy with the cost and when we paid the recommended price she thanked us kindly.  (Although everywhere, except the Guggenheim, thanked us kindly.)  It worked.  Not that I felt that I had to pay the recommended amount, but that I was given the option if I wanted to, to pay what I could afford, or wanted to, or get in for free if I really wanted to.  I would imagine that if I was a semi-regular visitor, I may choose to pay a lower amount or even go in free if I was working on a project using the museum as a resource.
It was busy and I missed the conversation between the visitor behind us and the admissions lady.  I would have liked to see his face as she politely explained how it worked and how he didn’t have to pay anything if he didn’t want to and hoped that he had a nice visit.

In addition to this observation I had an amazing time in the Met.  Knowing we couldn’t see it all we planned a rough route to see some of the things we prioritised and then got lost and sidetracked by rooms of armour or expressionist paintings.  There was also a good 10 minutes spent in Warhol’s Silver Clouds…and it snowed.  Perfect really.

October

So October was busy! It all started on 30th September (I know, this isn’t October). I volunteered to help at the opening of the Big Draw Campaign at the V&A. I couldn’t resist, my pseudo sister-in-law had volunteered and when I expressed my jealousy she called me out and just told me to volunteer. I took her advice and had an amazing day. I didn’t realise that The Big Draw was happening before that, or that it was such a big draw (hahaha!). I spent my morning standing in the front entrance of the V&A handing out paper, pencils and information and my afternoon encouraging people to add their doodles to one of the large templates of the museum. I met some wonderful people and will definitely be looking at what we can do in Leicester next year and how I can get involved again.
http://www.campaignfordrawing.org/bigdraw/
That was just one day though, I also had a deadline for my final MRes essay on quantitative methodology. I cannot say that I found this topic easy. I also had the distinction for my previous essay hanging over me. I needed to make sure this essay was as good. Looking back I am not sure it is at all; I tried to read around the subject, look at it from different angles and make sure I was finding some good case studies. I am not even sure I can say that I did my best as the subject matter was dry and formulaic. I kept being draw to how exciting some of the qualitative methods had been and how interesting the case studies were. I just have to hope that I got the point of it all and managed to explain it clearly and concisely. I don’t want a fail on my record!
Along with that, I had a blog post to write, not for here, but somewhere else. If it gets published I will link it all in. I have had my first experience of having something sent back for amendments. Luckily I had been prepared for this by some of my colleagues, so it wasn’t a shock and I didn’t see it as a sign of weakness! I hope that this will help me get more things published in the future. It all helps towards that PhD goal.
Along with these things I had organised an event for the end of the month. This year has not been easy events-wise and it was needed to sort a few things out on going. I think it was enjoyed by all the participants.
That’s my quick October update. I have since written and submitted my research proposal for my MRes dissertation. I am fully expecting some questions about this. My ideas seemed amazing earlier in the year, but putting fingers to keyboard to get it on paper seemed so difficult! Again I hope I managed to explain my question, methods and objectives sufficiently to get approval and get going. Or at least get some feedback on how to improve on it! Since that has been submitted, I am now “study-free” until 23rd November, barring any emails about submitted work.
As I am not able to switch off at the best of times I have learnt about American Revolutionary history (through the medium of Assassin Creed 3), more about the Tudors (by reading Winter King) and more about Raphael (by going to a lecture hosted by the University). I am feeling quite full of facts at the moment!