Micro unit

Zetong Zhang (Zoe)
Ojaswi Kejriwal
Shanshan Li
Mustafa Motiwala
Wanrui Ren
Rachel De Souza Nguma
Yiyao Lu

Brief:

Design a participatory method, interface or tool that enables people to explore values beyond money together

Week One

When starting the brief, we visited a range of locations to observe food markets, cafés, artist talks, the London marathon, and art markets. I would have liked to visit a poetry event. We used AEIOU research methods to explore some of the interactions happening there. The key insights I got from the artist talk I attended were that artist / cultural spaces set in pubs were a brilliant way of building a community feeling. It was a free knowledge exchange and brought a big, diverse crowd together. Attendees may feel more comfortable meeting/being with others when focused on the event, with less pressure on contributing to the interaction if meeting a friend and able to potentially enjoy themselves without the need of another person if alone with nothing to do. The Bar hosting a free event attracts more patrons/target audience. The bar is seen as a cultural hub, potentially increasing its reputation as a ‘vibe’ and leading to more consistent patronage. Artists see it as an enriching experience, extending experience past the momentary event. Attendees may see it as a form of self-expression - identifying with the crowd, artist or work being portrayed. Free events may attract a more relaxed atmosphere, and people are more likely to spend money on other things, with a bigger profit margin for the venue, such as drinks/food, etc. People are more likely to publicise it for them on social media or with their friends, and potentially come back for other such events, embedding the location in their lives a bit more than a one-off evening.

When we returned, our group decided to continue with markets. I looked more into the psychological perspectives on altruism and third spaces, but didn’t find any clear direction. After discussing our research, we decided to investigate further with some directed storytelling to fish out more interesting findings. We used the game We’re not really strangers as an interesting starting point where players ask prompts to spark deep, meaningful conversations. We put these posters around LCC and the local area to get some indirect responses from those uncomfortable being questioned, but we only got one response. Racheal, Wanrai, Yiyao, Zoe, and Shanshan interviewed participants, and we gave them free coffee to encourage conversation. We found that if you ask broad questions, you get vague/generic answers, and that the people at LCC all gave similar answers, typical of art students. We understood that the sample needs to be located somewhere more specific, i.e. a real market, as well as finding a more targeted line of inquiry. I suggested visiting the Princess May car boot in Dalston to conduct the interviews again with a better sample.

Week two

Insights from the carboot in Dalston; the location had characteristically old or arty/poorer populations. Sellers can talk you into a purchase you would normally leave or see expressions if their items are highly priced, and lower them if they want. Buyers have a good browsing experience, unusual things to see, from a felt blue hand to a pink leather chest harness. Social norms on talking to strangers more relaxed, people were more likely to comment on something looking good on other people if they see someone trying it on or strike up a conversation about what is being sold perhaps through the conversation with the seller, who wants to include all buyers into their chat to chase a sale. Items can reflect the seller’s personality, history, interest, artistry, and style, which can be shared when the buyer likes it and positively reinforces with their own. Older people seen selling had other older people hanging around the pitches. I also gravitated to pitches that had music I liked playing, people I thought looked the same style as me, and people of similar ages. This was a good indication of whether I would like the items generally and have more positive interactions.

One thing to note is that when asking people questions, we got quite a suspicious, antagonistic response from sellers, presumably wondering if we were trying to either find out the real value of the items, buy our own stock and undercut them, or investigate fake/stolen items. I automatically emulated the interactions already happening in the market around us as a way of getting the most natural/authentic interactions possible. This possibly poses a slightly grey area in terms of the ethical side of our research. However, we came to this research from an observational standpoint that led naturally from AEIOU into a more in-depth exploration of why these observations might be happening.  

Out of these insights, I came up with the following idea: Do a stall, take a sentence/image that relates to the community and customise the things so your quote is hidden amongst them. Like a backwards puzzle: at the start of the day, you have a finished artwork, and as items are bought, the artwork is slowly disassembled/disseminated. By creating the stall together as a group, it becomes an analogy for the social makeup of London.

week three

This idea changed to writing a story tag of where the item came from and attaching it to the item. People could then swap in their own items and write their own stories. This would remove the monetary value, which seemed problematic. However, after bodystorming a few times, a research method that allowed us to act out the interaction with each other, we found the written aspect didn’t work and was taking the interaction out of the experience rather than amplifying it. We needed to quantify how much a story was worth. After feedback, we then tried running a stall ourselves, testing multiple ideas; however, the carboot was very soon after the presentation, so I don’t feel we really explored the ideas in a satisfactory way that would get any good results.

We made a sign to ‘Carry on the story…’, but Tonisha pointed out it would be hard to write on, and even though we knew the written element wouldn’t work, we did it in a not very thought-out way. The key findings from running the stall were that the written element wasn’t working as predicted, but also when we tried to tell the story verbally. My conclusion is that ordinary items don’t tend to need a story; the pace was completely off for the dynamic momentum of the carboot, and people weren’t expecting to interact in that way (artistically). We had one storytelling interaction with a woman who wanted to tell us about her pet frog.

After this, we used affinity mapping to research new lines of enquiry, as most of the group didn’t want to pursue the storytelling aspect; however, I didn’t feel as if there were many other avenues. The team decided to make a Live Action Role Play to explore multiple ideas; however, upon first trial, the findings were transactional, and no value exchange occurred. This led to the reflection that we were overcomplicating it, and we needed to bring it back to the micro interaction observed at the carboot and decided to look at the intergenerational storytelling interaction people had through objects.

week four

We planned on facilitating conversation using an object that sparked intergenerational stories, and so did interviews with as many 50-70 and 14- 20 year olds as we could find. This sample was taken conveniently, so it was, in its nature, cross-cultural and weighted to the older generation. We got many interesting insights, the main one being that objects actually didn’t matter to many of the people, and it was the time spent and effort that went into either obtaining, using or the skill involved. Music was a common theme, and even the younger generation seemed to fetishise the older generation’s link to a more tangible music experience.

We then experimented with the idea of using music as our main theme rather than objects, and having two people, one of an older generation and one younger, tell their stories revolving around an experience, such as buying records or bonding with a sibling and then have the other person body storm that experience to see if they connected to it in the same way. I then recorded David telling his story about buying records in order to be the older generation to swap. However, the group decided to go in a different direction with a skill-sharing carboot. 

Whilst researching this line of inquiry, I looked at intergenerational community projects; they mainly focused on 60+ interacting with 10 years and below. I also looked at Time Bank, London Hackspace, SET & Blackhorse workshop as references. I then tried to evaluate what the best skills to use for this idea, along with the others, and saw that we could pursue three categories.

1. Those that sparked intergenerational discussion, such as using new technology, simple diy/handy life skills, foraging, and cooking.

2. Skills observed in the carboot, such as caring for objects, customisation, books & weird hobbies

3. What skills can we best facilitate, such as printmaking, origami & games

Personally, I had reservations on whether we could make this in any way different from the multitude of other art/community classes out there and wasn’t sure how to connect it with the intergenerational aspect through the framework.

week five

I looked at facilitated conversations across generations about collections as the best avenue for meaningful exchange. I wanted to try to get an older and a younger person with a similar interest to talk about it, comparing their experiences to see if any new values can be exchanged. I got David (51) involved again, as well as Ivy(22), both of whom are musicians and have a background in jazz and drum and bass, as well as other genres. Because it was virtual, I thought it would fit well into a digital learning/social platform proposed by Musfasta; however, I think that were it to really exist, you would find it hard to make it something more than is already out there. I tried thinking of adding a new dimension by having the calls recorded and potentially asking participants to give each other tasks that they could publish online for other viewers to watch, imitate or interact with themselves. I had this idea after researching Hackerspaces, places that have creative equipment but no staff, members post a project they're interested in doing, such as ‘making a chair’ online and then people who have the skills to help make that happen would help them. Recording would add a layer of safety and professionalism so that people would be less likely to exploit others, as there might be a lot of sexual/ power dynamic issues with big age gaps between online strangers. Insights, conversation flowed naturally between David and Ivy with the basis of music/records; however, because I only did this research with such a small sample, I don’t know whether this is because they’re both chatty generally.

Origami star event

Location LCC Café

I raised objections to the location, which Tonisha reiterated, as I didn’t feel like it would produce many results cross-generationally; however, I did my best to attract participants across age groups and managed to find people between 33 and 40 to take part, as well as the students. Results were successful; values exchanged, however, interactions were mainly directed at those running the session rather than to other participants.

Game event at the Royal Oak pub

Again, mainly people of the older generation were there, with only two people younger who didn’t want to be involved. The barman was friendly and we asked him to help us find other people to take part. We started the game with one man who enjoyed it; however, the other men were annoyed and left in the middle of the game. There was little conversation outside the game, and all conversation was mainly facilitated by the barman, who you could tell was a very outgoing person and was used to chatting to everyone quite easily. The group then conducted an interview with him. Further insights, some clientele are annoyed at documentation, disrespecting their space/mindset.

week six

After feedback from Al, we considered what directions we wanted to take. I had always been interested in the storytelling aspect from the carboot and thought it most related to all the research we had done. I felt like we had found such a rich topic that both touched on the individual lived experience and intermingled with the bonds of community. Telling stories is how we express ourselves and connect with people of other cultures/backgrounds, celebrating our cultural identities, overcoming prejudices and gaining support.

Once split into storytelling/origami subsections, I got some outside participants from the local area that I knew, conveniently sampled from my friends due to the late notice, which meant they were all roughly the same age and had fairly similar backgrounds, either artistic or young city professionals. However, the reception from all I asked was very enthusiastic, including some of the venues I contacted. Peckham Pelican Bar tentatively agreed to allow us to use their space to conduct the workshop, but wanted assurances that we would clean it at the end and not have anything with fumes. They unfortunately cancelled at the last minute due to a scheduling clash.

We ran a test with Alex to test the flow of the workshop and realised that having clay only would force people to work on a small scale, so we decided to expand our materials. Feedback was that the offboarding could be more in-depth. We also changed the running order of our process from (making model to telling story) to (telling story to making model) to encourage the participants to create something less representational and more imaginatively interwoven with the story being told. We repeated the test with more participants; three LCC students were conveniently sampled, as with Alex, which meant that these people were fairly creative and used to thinking/making artistic objects which other people might not. However, we found that the changes we made were successful and participants made more imaginative outcomes, told interesting and personal stories and had more performative interactions with the materials.   

We ran out of time advertising the workshop, as I only managed to get The Roebuck to agree to let us run it a few hours ahead of time. However, I made some flyers to put up around us so that we weren’t just going up to people cold. We put them around the bar, and anyone who read the posters was invited to join. Unfortunately, there was already a pub quiz going on, and the other people were reluctant to leave their conversations.

The bar staff were not as friendly and didn’t help us recruit this time. A few people who had agreed previously to attend pulled out, so we were left with only three participants who were conveniently sampled creatives and therefore were disposed to react positively to it, also knew each other and came from a similar background. Therefore, we had no cross-generational interaction and did not find out how strangers would react to sharing in the workshop. We did, however, encourage more collaborative interaction at the storytelling phase, which helped interpersonal involvement, although participants did want the workshop to go on longer, so if running it again, I would consider including more warm-up exercises.

We also took the models for documentation, which I felt was rather unethical. Next time, I would bring documentation equipment to the space so that participants could bring it home. I made a workflow of the process to hand on to other creatives to make workshops of their own in the same style as the posters and would test with others going forward. Zoe and ShanShan made a website to document the outcomes and stories digitally, which received good feedback and would serve as a way of promoting the in-person workshops, archiving experience, and creating more bonds within the community.