PhD Progress update

My PhD had changed alot since the very beginning when I had what seems like a really vague idea now about storytelling and mental health. I then became interested in how stories teach people about their culture, including emotional language and understanding. I have clarified my thesis statement to: The civilisation of emotion: does traditional storytelling or do stories have an effect on how young people identify and understand the language of emotion?

So in my thesis I am going to explore Arlie Hochschild’s concept of how society uses feeling in relation to young people and traditional storytelling. I intend to use Hochschild’s ideas to form a link between Jack Zipes’ application of Elias and civilitie and Bruno Bettelheim’s discussions on the possible meaning and understanding of fairy stories. While Zipes debates the behavioural influences of fairy tale literature on civilization Bettelheim’s focus was on children’s psychological maturity (which is important to well-being when it comes to coping with depression and anxiety). Emotions in this way are co-dependant knowledge, we learn the language of emotion how to recognise, label, and place meaning on feelings through our interactions with others. Fitting in with ideas of social constructionism the language, meaning and expression of emotion is socially constructed and under constant revision.

So what do I mean by ‘does traditional storytelling or do stories have an effect’? I believe that narrative can help young people to negotiate transitions from late childhood to early adulthood. My research methods (comprising of interviews, storytelling, and group discussion) act in an intervention capacity, in that the students’ interpretation and experience of the storytelling performance allows their ideas to be perceived and validated, in other words tested against the responses of others. Social influences such as media, the internet, and other people, have narrative elements which combined on many levels potentially inform our emotional language and understanding. The research may be used in part to begin to separate out the processes of meaning-making which may validate why storytelling may have psychological benefits because it is exploring the student’s words and interactions over a period of time. And I hope this may take us a step closer to understanding what a marvellous thing our culture is, and how we can encourage multiple layers of tolerance and understanding between different genders, class and culture, and empower young people to make a difference in society with the right support. The support they tell us they need rather than what, in good faith, we try to impose.

          On other news, going part time has helped the money situation I’m working hard to complete my PhD in four years on schedule. If anyone hears of any grants or sponsorship that my PhD might qualify for please let me know. I’ve written to my local MP, and to the Minister of Education, to appeal for more consideration of PhD funding, such as for example changing the current Career Development Loan system. It is designed to cover two years of study and provides a maximum of £10,000 which then has to be paid back in roughly £200 instalments a month. It was never designed to provide for PhD students but some of us have no other choice. I used mine to support myself and cover the bulk of my first two years fees. This past year I have applied for funding and worked part time to save up money to pay off the loan and pay for subsequent year’s fees. However the unexpected move to Warwick University with my supervisor in September has eaten up my savings for next year’s fees because I was unable to find work from Sept – January. But as in the past if I work hard I know that I will create an opportunity to find the money I need to get by. Feeling forcibly optimistic. A big thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far.

Happy Easter J

Storytelling Workshops

This month I have been arranging to go into three schools to start collecting data from focus groups. I have three student storytellers on board for three schools. And I will be conducting the research in the summer term (April – May). Paul Whitehouse (English PhD student) and I have also finalised details of our summer school programme for widening participation and are applying for funding. This will include 40 students from local schools over two days. The theme is transformations as it give the students a chance to rewrite and subvert fairy tales and put together a performance of their ideas for the final day. The two days will include storytelling, performance storytelling and writing workshops, A campus tour and hopefully a bit of shadow puppet making as well.

Creative Summer School Programme

This month I met with Jonathan Davidson, Chief Executive for Writing West Midlands. I had no idea the range of stuff they were doing it is really great to see people investing their time in supporting creativity in the area. I was especially interested in the creative writing and arts education programme they do for children and young people.

I met with Jonathan to spread the word about a summer programme I am putting together with Paul Whitehouse (English). A one to two day event for adolescents which will be on the theme of Transformations and involve storytelling performances, interactive storytelling performances, discussions about folk tales and then the students will be aided in creating their own storytelling performances. We hope to host this on Warwick University campus to encourage widening participation.

Things are looking harder to get funds to support my PhD research. I am currently supporting my research with part time work. I looking for a storyteller or storytellers to volunteer to learn five folk tales and perform them to adolescents in three schools in the west midlands. The performances will be fifteen minutes long and take place in the summer term (April to May). We have a great Theatre department at Warwick however. So hoping that some students would find the work useful to contribute to their portfolio and there is also a chance to be involved in our summer school on Warwick campus.

In other news I and another PhD student are putting together a webpage about female equality. We hope to offer well-balanced articles on the range of feminism in the UK. It’s not all radical! And also intend to supply articles on gender related topics to empower women to communicate with their partners about the issues that affect them. We’ve set up a website and are currently writing and sourcing articles. So watch this space.

Writing for Performance 17th January 2013

An interdisciplinary discussion of the different way people go about doing collaborative theatre work. Talkers on the panel included Omar Elerian, Associate Director of the Bush Theatre, West London, Michael Bywater, and playwright James Wilson.

Inua Ellams, who wrote 13 Fairy Negro Tales, started off the evening by performing one of his fabulous poems.

The discussion was about finding form, a works shape, in order to tell stories in the theatre. As one person shared with the group, this can be a fine act, ‘Covered in honey wearing moustaches singing the blues, but it all made sense at the time.’ And surprisingly to the audience too! Sounds brilliant, wish I’d seen it.

Sometimes in modern theatre the ideas that you are working with can be very fragmented especially in collaborations when people have different point of view. Theatre is an organic discourse with the audience. The work, Omar Elerian said, isn’t truly finished until the final curtain falls. Different audiences have an effect on the acting of the play. And so too in my reading of storytelling performance I am discovering that the audience and storyteller influence one another by visual clues.

Anyone interested in collaborative work should check out Radiolab as suggested by Inua Ellams. Thanks!

Storytelling Event and Webinar

Story telling

Friday was Christmas Sparkle my storytelling event for Warwick postgrads with Colin King.

As we sat there will mulled wine and mince pies Colin amused us with amusing, spooky and local stories. Originally from Ireland Colin went from teacher to storyteller. He also works with schools to make subjects interesting for their students.

Feedback:

“The storyteller was very good and I really liked the ancient folktales about Warwickshire and Ireland. Thanks for organising the event!”

“It was very enjoyable.”

Webinar

Also took part in a seminar via a webcam between Warwick University and Monash University in Australia. This was organised by Celia Bennett Bernstein and Josette (from Warwick), Carlos and Nicholas (from Monash).

Celia is doing work on dystonia (uncontrollable and sometimes painful muscle spasms caused by incorrect signals from the brain). Please see TheDystonia Society for more information.

Discussions were around Foucault’s ideas of power and sense of self. Specifically how medicine companies have the power to set social expectations about what is normal about our sense of self, emotions and states of mind. Thereby fitting people into categories which impact on mental health.

Some of the points I found interesting were about the way illness acts as a biographical interuption, it's not seen as normal. Yet what is normal anyway? This is a generalisation determined by society, and the dominant powers in that society such as health care and drug companies. Organisations like the NHS produce materials such as leaflets, posters, and TV advertisements and therefore have great influence on how health is percieved. Are drug companies acting in an oppressive way in order to make money? Regardless, the way knowledge is created and then shared is important in understanding how we can change public perceptions to empower people. So what changes do we want to see?

Hoshchild & Storytelling

December 3^rd Warwick University Writer’s department hosted poet Michael Farrell from Australia. I liked the narrative style of his most recent stuff. Had a conversation with him at the end about the poem Juggle which I thought was called Jungle, as I heard lots of jungle imagery in it, and was carried away by my own internal narrative and his words. It was fascinating hearing him talk about his techniques as a writer (which sometimes involve chance, like throwing a dice). I was interested in poetry as a verbal language… in my experience of hearing poetry it comes to life in a way that it doesn’t on the page. However Farrell challenged this perception because his form is very visually represented on the page.

I was also lucky to attend storytelling performances by MA students of Drama and Theatre Education on 5^th December at Warwick’s Avon studio.  

The performed stories were The Good Daughter, Rapunzel, Persephone, Nezha, Emperor’s New Clothes and Bluebeard. I particularly liked the creative quirks in The Emperor’s New Clothes and Bluebeard. The students are going to perform to children. The students work interested me because I have been thinking of my PhD, more recently, in terms of the emotional language of stories, the values and meanings hidden in their verbal expression, and how adolescents could construct an idea of the emotional “norms” of society from this. This has links with work by Arlie Hochschild on “feeling rules”. From now until January I will be focusing on reading more around this area to formulate a paper considering how the ideas of Hochschild could be used as part of an interdisciplinary approach to my work on storytelling with adolescents.

Harry Ricketts Poetry Reading

Poet and biography Harry Ricketts was at Warwick University on Tuesday 27th December to talk about his new book Strange Meetings. As he talked about the process of writing the book I was struck by how much fiction and nonfiction intertwine in their techniques and challenges. Writing involves thinking about perspective, and there are many angles this could take. Framing a book with real meetings and links between a select number of war poets is an intriguing idea and the book reads very well.

The highpoint for me was hearing the poem Quarantine Island. A strange choice perhaps, but the following words reminded me of this strange process called a PhD.

'There will be days of sudden calm,
nights when stars burn into your head.
World turns strange and yet the same.'

It was fascinating to have a chat with him afterwards about the process of writing as I hope to use poetry in some form in my creative piece. Folktales often have rhymes and lines of poetry within them, and I'd like to experiment with this in modern fairy tales.