July 2011

July has been a busy month, one where my responsibilities on the marketing team for the exhibition have solidified. I have been contacting as many people and groups as I could to find a way of getting my workshops well and truly underway in a more structured group environment.  I have also been thinking about how I will communicate clearly and effectively what I have done, why and what new knowledge I have found out in the field in which I have been working in.

I have started liaising with the guides to carry out my workshops with them.  I have also carried out workshops with some young people in Dubai, and therefore have another few iterations of the workshop exercises, and even the title has changed to Identi-tee.  I was also asked to present my ideas to a homeless charity as they are looking for creative ways to help young people engage with their health. 

I do feel this is a really key time for my project and momentum is gathering, for the exhibition and my workshops, as well as all the information I am gathering from the workshops, which at the moment I am logging here, and the feedback means changes need to be made before the next workshops.

I have also been working hard on ideas for a viral for the exhibition and we now have a great plan pulled together.  Obviously the amount of work needed to pull off a great exhibition is dawning on the group slowly.  But hopefully it will dawn quick enough, there is a lot to do, and the problems with the sponsorship team no longer wanting to actually look after sponsorship is extremely worrying.  Although each person has been allocated a contact/company to contact regarding sponsorship or support, this isn't moving very quickly.  I have suggested a number of fundraising ideas to the group, which were not taken up, there was a bit of confusion as to the differences between fundraising and sponsorship, and it was a discussion I did not have the energy to get involve in.  There are definitely some real issues that arise from differences in culture and language barriers.

I hope by the end of August to have completed 2 more workshops and iterated the workshop plans even further.  As well as having completed a lot of the academic reading I am working through, which I hope will help me present my findings in context. 

Identity and young homeless people

Today I had to write something up for someone at work, to propose my project to a charity that supports young homeless people! Fingers crossed, I prepared the following:

For my Masters I am investigating ways of promoting personal development with young people.  By developing exercises that discuss society, culture, values, hopes, dreams and aspirations, we can encourage young people to be confident individuals, enjoy learning, make progress, achieve, and become responsible citizens that make a positive contribution to society.   We discuss ourselves, our relationship, our society and our environment, and how all these components affect our sense of self. 

How can young people be encourage to develop their personal identities through creative critical reflection?

Key are for discussion are:

Personal identities

1.      Understanding that identity is affected by a range of factors, including a positive sense of self

2.      Recognising that the way in which personal qualities, attitudes, skills and achievements are evaluated affects confidence and self-esteem

3.      Understanding that self-esteem can change with personal circumstances, such as those associated with family and friendships, achievements and employment.

Healthy lifestyles

1.      Recognising that healthy lifestyles, and the wellbeing of self and others, depend on information and making responsible choices

2.      Understanding that physical, mental, sexual and emotional health affect our ability to lead fulfilling lives, and that there is help and support available when they are threatened

3.      Dealing with growth and change as normal parts of growing up.

Risk

1.      Understanding risk in both positive and negative terms and understanding that individuals need to manage risk to themselves and others in a range of situations

2.      Appreciating that pressure can be used positively or negatively to influence others in situations involving risk

3.      Developing the confidence to try new ideas and face challenges safely, individually and in groups.

Relationships

1.      Understanding that relationships affect everything we do in our lives and that relationship skills have to be learnt and practised

2.      Understanding that people have multiple roles and responsibilities in society and that making positive relationships and contributing to groups, teams and communities is important

3.      Understanding that relationships can cause strong feelings and emotions.

Diversity

1.      Appreciating that, in our communities, there are similarities as well as differences between people of different race, religion, culture, ability or disability, gender, age or sexual orientation

2.      Understanding that all forms of prejudice and discrimination must be challenged at every level in our lives.

 

These themes are developed and explored through creativity and reflection.

CREATIVITY Producing artefacts, experimenting with ideas, materials, tools and techniques, taking risks and learning from mistakes. 

REFLECTION Exploring the visual, tactile and other sensory qualities of their own and others’ work, identifying how values and meanings are conveyed, developing views and expressing reasoned judgement, analyzing and reflecting on their work and the work of others.

Homelessness: psychological well-being and identity

Homelessness poses a real risk to identity, the social stigma and negative status associated with being homeless combined with the 'hearthlessness', leads to a lack of attachment to and identification with temporary accommodation.  Emotional attachment to and identification with places is key to psychological health. Feeling isolated, rejected and alienated are also extremely common with homeless people, these again in turn can lead to psychological problems in relation to identity.  Another key issue is having somewhere 'safe' for emotions and thoughts, without this 'psychological space' a person can become emotionally withdrawn and lock emotions away.  The above can all be described as 'Identity Threat' which occurs when one or more of the elements for identity: self-esteem, continuity, positive distinctiveness and self-efficacy, are challenged.

Rejection
Numerous homeless people have felt rejected by their friends, family and society.  "Feelings of being rejected by the family may contribute to a feeling of ‘psychological homelessness’, which, according to Baldwin et al. (1997), often precedes physical homelessness".

Loss of original identity and adoption of negative homeless identity
Being homeless can threaten your continuity of self, destroy your self-esteem and distinctiveness.  It's common for a homeless person to take on an identity projected onto to them by others, from responses from others, having money thrown at you. "Such experiences have been referred to as a denial of a homeless person's right to exist within society (Bentley, 1997)".

Separation and loss
Being separated from your family and loved ones can be a real shock when you are homeless which often resembles the early stages of grief (Murray-Parkes, 1996; Archer, 1999).

Psychological space
For many homeless people moving to a hostel does not necessarily provide them with everything they need emotional, and so not having safe conditions for 'personal issues' can lead to emotional withdrawal.  "Psychological possessions such as thoughts and feelings may be protectively stored away inside the individual concerned (Bentley, 1997)". 'Home' is not just a place to stay, it must be safe and secure, locking your cupboard in the kitchen and your bedroom door leads to a sense of 'hearthlessness', as temporary accommodation usually lacks a home-like quality.

Salvation
To cope with the above homeless people need routine, to maintain regular contact with people, to build self-esteem and feelings of social value, to achieve goals.  This structure, continuity and security can be found by helping others, the elderly, or other homeless people.  Such opportunities can totally change things for a homeless person.  As far as physical space goes, it can help to stamp personality and character into their surroundings, part of a homeless person's identity can often feel as if it still resides at 'home', their primary place of attachment, but their new accommodation, however temporary needs to be seen as a container for their identity.  Connecting with people is key recovering form homelessness, they need to talk about how they feel, they need people around them that can help practically as well as emotionally.

Exhibition Planning meeting

We presented the following last night from the Marketing team:

We explained our idea about creating a viral video for promotional reasons, especially as in the new building there will be screens but no where for posters.  We will also have a space to project a film in the entrance to the exhibition.  I think instead of creating a costly sponsors wall using vinyl stickers, we could project the sponsors logos here instead. So the idea is to get a huge range of interesting quotes that we can use for our PR and Marketing campaign, they can be edited into different films and used as images, we can even use people answers to create a story without the actual questions!  The top 10 questions and the format for answering them was as follows after the survey:

Why should you come to our exhibition?	3-words
What makes our exhibition different?	3-words
What does creativity smell like?	Image
How do you define yourself now?	Short sentence
Who were you at the beginning of the course? And who are you know?	Short sentence
What if imagination didn’t exist?	3-words
What does diversity taste like?	Object
What form has your artefact taken?	Object
What does taking risks look like?	Object
What was your best failure?	Short sentence

We also discussed our PR plan, contacts database, press coverage reports, and the framework we have outlined for the website.  Which currently stands as:

Exhibition Website framework
The headings below are just to show the outline structure, we can decide on these at a later date:
Homepage/About/Contact
    This page will contain the following elements:

Exhibition information

name

dates and times

location

link to map for location

Details of an exhibition related events

private view

talks

workshop

any other experiential events

Featured student profile

2 students a week until exhibition week

Viral film

    perhaps even different versions of the film

Twitter feed

    showing regular updates

Social media icons

        facebook, twitter, linked in
    Mailing list
        somewhere for interested parties to submit email addresses for mailing list

Contact       

contact details/info request

Showcase/Profiles
    This page will contain the profiles for each student, each student must provide:
        Name
        Question
        Images (3-4 each?)
        Contact details
        650 word synopsis
Press
    A record of the press coverage received, and photo calls
Sponsorship/Supporters

This page will contain details of our sponsors as well as details for any prospective sponsors (the pdf), contact details for the sponsorship team, and perhaps a way of requesting a call? This will include the background info on CSM and web links. 

Sponsors

Today I have contacted all the managers at the local Sainsbury's branches.  As all requests for local sponsorship and support are managed locally by their stores, who are allocated budgets to support their local community.

Core values, beliefs and ideals...

Everyone agreed that their core values were integral to their personal identity, the below are the kind of things people felt were their core values:

Honesty
Diligence
Dedication
Being loving/caring
Having a sense of humour
Integrity
Empathy
Intelligence
Creativity
Stay positive
Use your imagination
Don't bitch
Always try and see the opposite side of the problem
Don't worry to much about a single situation
Treat people the way you want to be treated
Don't get jealous
Accommodate and be flexible
Love yourself
Be true to yourself
Be happy
Be open minded
Avoid passing judgement
Help those in need
Family
Help the world
Stand up for things you believe in
Stay in touch with people
Religious values, even though I am not a church-goer
Respect

Some people felt doing things to make others happy was very important, instead of looking after themselves and putting themselves first.  Others felt the only way you could feel liberated was by keeping your beliefs and ideals in every situation, this helps you feel grounded.   Two thirds of the group think about their values, their identity and beliefs a lot of the time, whereas the others felt it wasn't really something they spent much time on.  Some people said that when they meet bullies it causes them to question the above, they think and worry about their personal identity more in these situations. 

We then discussed their hopes, dreams and aspirations, and considered if they had done this kind of workshop at school whether it would have helped them.  Did they enjoy the workshop and find it useful? Some felt this wasn't really something that they needed to think about until they were at university, they felt that was when they would begin to plan their future.  This was very interesting as this was a message they seemed to be getting from their educators, and surely these elements need to be develop much earlier than university.  Then discussion moved to reflection and meditation, and whether these techniques could help facilitate self awareness.  Some young people thought this was a little too 'touchy feely' they felt there was no point encouraging things that might disguise the disappointment in the real world. 

10 things I love exercise feedback

For this exercise we started talking about interests and hobbies and moved into compiling lists of 10 things they loved.  This was one of the first exercises but it has taken me a while to work through and write up the different workshops and exercises, these are some of the key interests:

Photography
Reading
Fashion
Writing
Drawing
Painting
Cooking
Craft
Films
Music
Computer Games
Digital and Fantasy Art
Roleplaying
Socialising
Eating
Hanging out with friends
Horse-riding
Fencing
Shopping
Going to the beach
Playing the Piano
Ballet
Dancing

For 10 things I love, we got some of the following responses, and to be honest I was pretty shocked how many times texting and Facebook came up!

Culture, ethnicity, nationality

From the last workshop I have noted down how the conversation around culture went...

Culture is the interpretation of everything that surrounds you

Attitude, beliefs, goals, knowledge, behaviour, values

A pattern of knowledge and behaviour

A common way a group of people communicate and share (e.g. food, language etc)

Multidimensional - can encompass beliefs, tradition, fashion, food, music, language, body language...

Usually built over time but can also change

Where you come from and how the people are/act in your country


Something a group of people follow - the same type of principles

What each country follows

Traditions

We then discussed whether people felt that they were part of a specific culture, did they identify with a specific one etc?

About half the group didn't feel that they could identify with a specific culture, the remainder identified with the culture of their parents as well as that of the communities they live in now in the London. 

This led the discussion to ethnicity, and whether those tick boxes of white, white other, black African, black Caribbean etc were really that easy to tick!  Out of those who understood what ethnicity meant, most found it very easy to chose, others felt there ethnicity had no impact at all on their identity. 

Discussing nationality was a lot easier, people didn't have an emotional connection with this, it is literally what their passport or passports say on the cover. 

Viral Video Questions

Choose your top 10 questions below, 10 being your favourite, 1 being your least favourite and 0 being the questions you don't think we should include. For each question also select the method in which you think they should respond.
  
Required answer

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

3-Words

Short Sentence

Object

Image

Why should you come to our exhibition?

What makes our exhibition different?

Who do you make happy with your reseach?

How do you define yourself now?

Why did you chose this course?

What were your expectations?

How do you achieve change?

Who's helped you with your project/gatekeepers?

What form has your artefact taken?

What does creativity smell like?

What does exhibiting feel like?

What next for you?

What does your mum think of your project?

What advice would you give to prospective students?

What's your favourite feature in the new building?

What does taking risks look like?

What does diversity taste like?

What was your best failure?

Who were you at the beginning of the course? And who are you know?

Marketing meeting minutes

Dear All

Further to our meeting tonight, here are some notes and actions:

Firstly we discussed the viral/video, we came up with a list of questions, I have created a survey using these questions, please read them all and score your top 10.  The question you like the most please score a 10, then work your way down, the ones you don't like we should use should be scored a zero. 

We also discussed for each question whether we should ask people to answer using a short sentence, 3 words on a blackboard or A4 piece of card, by showing an object or by holding up an image.  For each question in the survey select the means of answering it that you think is best. 

Finally we initially thought it would be best to record all the students answering the questions on our return in the Autumn term, but then we realised that we could get real diversity in images and footage if we allowed students to do this whilst they were at 'home' for the summer.  We will need to set specific parameters for filming and the images taken, to ensure the quality and size of images and footage are as uniform as possible. 

We also considered once we had collated all the footage and photos we could create more than one viral, depending on the target audience, but these films would be shown on our website, facebook etc, as well as on the screens at the university as event promotion, and project in the entrance to the gallery during exhibition week.

Please find the link below to the survey, complete this week, so we can discuss next Tuesday:

http://www.impressity.com/Survey/sl.aspx?SurveyLinkId=wbscsbkypicvgyrthtqr

Next we discussed creating a framework for the website, please take a look at the following document and amend as necessary, again we can finalise this next week:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GJZWnyjvXp9T1v0jRSMD30QD4JSHGhkqXxXNs7zx1C0/edit?hl=en_US

Actions for the next few weeks:

Promotional strategy - decide on key focuses
Fundraising - chose activities and progress with them
Sponsorship - chose a sponsor to each contact, contact, chase and update
Start website build - inline with chosen framework
Events - chose and plan workshops, talks, events, bands, dj's etc
PR database - complete work on the database and produce a list of influential bloggers in our fields
Press coverage report  - daily log of CSM related articles
PR Stories - start finding and writing stories for press releases that will appeal to journalists and bloggers (press release template in google docs)
Flickr account - set up one for the course, ask students to upload relevant images of CSM, the course, their projects etc, we will need the images for press releases as well as social media sites

Have a great week, talk soon

A