Absence

 I have been absent from this blog for quite some time. There may be a whole bunch of reasons for this; the end of a particularly busy year, the end of the creative methods workshops, the upcoming exhibition for the International Research Culture Conference at Warwick, the onset of Summer, an invitation to Prof Mairi Macintyre and I to deliver some workshops in Palma in July, and a well-deserved holiday and rest (that began with a nasty bout of covid...)

'The Holiday Begins' July 2024

It has been all of these things, but I have also been in a bit of a bunker. I developed 'the fear', around my my perceived inability to make sense of the research data generated by my project.

'The fear' comes from a deep place. It shows up in different ways in all my conversations with researchers. Some people (myself included) glibly call it 'imposter syndrome', a feeling that one cannot quite do it. Imposter syndrome doesn't quite cut it because I know I am capable of doing this, it is simply a fear of what story the data will tell. It often isn't the story that I imagined it would tell, and this leaves me feeling a bit disappointed, a kind of personal failure if you will. Because of course it's all about me right? Of course it isn't. It is simply my job to tell the story, not write the story, or fix the story. Getting to grips with that has gently eased me out of my malaise.

So now I have got over that small hump, had some relaxing and delightful time away (this has seeped into the chilled and slow drawings and paintings I have done over the Summer).

'The Dordogne' July 2024

'Leaves on the Patio at Le Virolan' July 2024

'Eyes' July 2024

So my collaborator (Charlotte Marshall) and I will be co-presenting a conference poster at the IRCC and we have decided to 'go rogue' in that we are trying to challenge the usual format one sees at conferences by co-creating a collage-based poster that represents our experiences of using creative methods in research. I have not done collage for what seems like an age so it was great to get the glue out again. The poster will be entitled: 'Hidden in Plain Sight: Research Culture and the Researcher Experience'. Here is my half of the yin and yang, and I await Charlotte's with excitement and curiosity!

I will be exhibiting a long laundry line, with clothes pegged out onto it. Printed onto the clothes is the work of researchers who have attended the creative methods workshops. Charlotte is deploying a fridge in her exhibition. It is fascinating that both of us have drawn on the domestic to represent the messy, complex and people-oriented aspects of research. I will save my reflections on what we both produce for another blog post after the exhibition and conference.