Odd: feeling different in the world of education
Lead Research Organisation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department Name: Faculty of Education
Abstract
This 3-year interdisciplinary project will investigate the experiences of, and repercussions for, children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school. While such feelings are not always traumatic, statistics produced by Young Minds (2016) suggest three children in every classroom have diagnosed mental health issues. This proposal has been developed in partnership with the school where the research will be located, Alma Park Primary School in Levenshulme, Manchester, selected for its diverse school and local communities.
This research is timely, firstly, in its innovative approach to rethinking 'difference' to contribute new knowledge to the anti-bullying and inclusion agendas in school and secondly, in its methodology, building on the developing field of community co-produced knowledge (Facer and Enright, 2016), and focusing the lenses of art and anthropology on both the substantive inquiry into oddness, and the theoretical work of developing interdisciplinary methodology and protocols.
Over the last 5 years the UK government has invested heavily in diversity, mental health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on young children's resilience (DfE, 2016; DoH, 2014). The day-to-day work of our partner school reflects the ethos of many schools; informed by such initiatives, their commitment to 'celebrating difference' palpable, yet they express concern for individualising discourses that filter down from educational policy, collectively defining who falls outside of educational and social norms. The proposed project recognises that an interdisciplinary approach is needed to break out of conventional educational thinking about difference and conformity. We will bring together perspectives from art, anthropology and education to examine how feeling a 'misfit', 'loner' or the 'odd one out' can have a detrimental impact on some children, whilst recognising others may occupy this space more confidently. Children are perceived as capable, skilled social actors in the world, who have fascinating perspectives on this topic. Working in co-production with a whole primary school community, involving children from all year groups (aged 4-11), parents, teachers and non-teaching staff, the research will produce different kinds of practice-based collaborations to ask pressing and difficult questions of policy rhetoric and practices in school via interrogations of the generative idea of odd; what odd means; what its value is and why this matters, what it tells us about ordinary, everyday encounters with one another, places and things. The research collective will develop arts-led strategies and other resources for minimizing the destructive effects of feeling 'odd' or 'different', but will also attempt to harness the potency of difference as a force for creativity, empowerment and policy critique. For our purposes, the term odd opens a space for thinking otherwise in a school context where powerful discourses of difference, diversity and inclusion (Norwich, 2014) rub up against material processes of normalisation and conformity (Brisard, Menter & Smith, 2010). This project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge, enhance understandings and develop creative insights into how art theory and practice, together with social science methodologies contribute empirically to an emerging field of work that attends to difference differently (Barad, 2014).
The project team have the expertise required for this interdisciplinary study: a visual anthropologist with expertise in interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design (Ravetz); a socially engaged artist working in large social environments where people, object and places interact (Shaw); a co-production consultant (Pool) and educationalist (Pahl) with extensive knowledge of co-production and empirical work in schools; a PI with extensive experience of externally-funded research on children and childhood and interdisciplinary, arts-informed methodologies (Holmes).
This research is timely, firstly, in its innovative approach to rethinking 'difference' to contribute new knowledge to the anti-bullying and inclusion agendas in school and secondly, in its methodology, building on the developing field of community co-produced knowledge (Facer and Enright, 2016), and focusing the lenses of art and anthropology on both the substantive inquiry into oddness, and the theoretical work of developing interdisciplinary methodology and protocols.
Over the last 5 years the UK government has invested heavily in diversity, mental health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on young children's resilience (DfE, 2016; DoH, 2014). The day-to-day work of our partner school reflects the ethos of many schools; informed by such initiatives, their commitment to 'celebrating difference' palpable, yet they express concern for individualising discourses that filter down from educational policy, collectively defining who falls outside of educational and social norms. The proposed project recognises that an interdisciplinary approach is needed to break out of conventional educational thinking about difference and conformity. We will bring together perspectives from art, anthropology and education to examine how feeling a 'misfit', 'loner' or the 'odd one out' can have a detrimental impact on some children, whilst recognising others may occupy this space more confidently. Children are perceived as capable, skilled social actors in the world, who have fascinating perspectives on this topic. Working in co-production with a whole primary school community, involving children from all year groups (aged 4-11), parents, teachers and non-teaching staff, the research will produce different kinds of practice-based collaborations to ask pressing and difficult questions of policy rhetoric and practices in school via interrogations of the generative idea of odd; what odd means; what its value is and why this matters, what it tells us about ordinary, everyday encounters with one another, places and things. The research collective will develop arts-led strategies and other resources for minimizing the destructive effects of feeling 'odd' or 'different', but will also attempt to harness the potency of difference as a force for creativity, empowerment and policy critique. For our purposes, the term odd opens a space for thinking otherwise in a school context where powerful discourses of difference, diversity and inclusion (Norwich, 2014) rub up against material processes of normalisation and conformity (Brisard, Menter & Smith, 2010). This project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge, enhance understandings and develop creative insights into how art theory and practice, together with social science methodologies contribute empirically to an emerging field of work that attends to difference differently (Barad, 2014).
The project team have the expertise required for this interdisciplinary study: a visual anthropologist with expertise in interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design (Ravetz); a socially engaged artist working in large social environments where people, object and places interact (Shaw); a co-production consultant (Pool) and educationalist (Pahl) with extensive knowledge of co-production and empirical work in schools; a PI with extensive experience of externally-funded research on children and childhood and interdisciplinary, arts-informed methodologies (Holmes).
Planned Impact
This research will generate impact in the third sector, within professional and practitioner groups, the Levenshulme community and the wider public in general. The approach to all aspects of knowledge exchange comes out of our long-term co-produced work with our partners, Alma Park School and its local community; as well as our collaborations with Catalyst Psychology, NCB and The Showroom gallery. Letters of support are attached to this application.
The project has four key impact objectives:
1. Development of new ways of understanding and responding to children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school
2. Provision of alternative inclusive practices in education and contributions to behaviour and anti-bullying policies
3. Mobilise the value and potential of oddness to empower children, families and local communities
4. Raise awareness of the importance and potential of research collaborations across art, anthropology and education
Pathways to achieving these impact objectives are outlined below.
Professional and practitioner groups (teachers, classroom-based practitioners and Educational Psychologists)
a) Develop practitioner reflexivity: Exhibitions, Odd celebration, training and CPD sessions, short film & user package will strengthen the critical reflexivity of Educational Psychologists, teachers and other classroom practitioners within the school, across the school's Cluster Group and in training opportunities for mental health organisations such as Catalyst Psychology to consider framings of children, families and ways of knowing.
b) Promote curriculum and school development
The outputs will inform teachers' reflective development across the curriculum, particularly in areas of the arts and inclusion
c) Initiate changes to training, school policy and practices
The project will produce a new 'Inclusion manifesto' to effect changes to school policy and practices. The work will produce practice development and training opportunities for NCB who work with children and families, national policy-makers and practitioners to research, innovate and establish best practice across the children's sector. The project outputs will force the reconsideration of labels, stereotypes, behaviour and diagnoses. Practitioners will also benefit from the use of interdisciplinary research methods.
Local community and the wider public: Community of Levenshulme, Manchester
a) Raising awareness of, and debating the importance of 'diversity', including eccentricity, quirkiness and non-conformity in communities
Families & local community will have opportunities to rethink and reflect positively on issues affecting their lives such as social cohesion and difference. The Odd Secret event among the other community-based exhibitions and celebrations will encourage community participation to harness the potency of differences in the community as a force for creativity, empowerment and policy critique.
Third Sector: Museums and galleries (The Showroom) and Charities (NCB)
a) Exhibition work
The Showroom is respected for projects that work with communities, artists and social issues to generate discussions, events and exhibitions, Odd resonates strongly with their 'Communal Knowledge' project. The school-based 'Odd Exhibition' feeds into The Showroom final exhibition, with the intention of offering a national event. The movement of the work from school to public exhibition, places new demands on the work, needing to communicate outside the school space not just within it, and generates spaces for discussions in the gallery about the role of the children as subjects and/or critics.
b) Creating new research networks
The Odd Lab will open up and sustain new networks for exploration of follow-on events and further funding opportunities. Through the Odd Celebration and Odd Exhibition, we will broaden the odd network to draw in other potential partners in the pursuit of further funding.
The project has four key impact objectives:
1. Development of new ways of understanding and responding to children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school
2. Provision of alternative inclusive practices in education and contributions to behaviour and anti-bullying policies
3. Mobilise the value and potential of oddness to empower children, families and local communities
4. Raise awareness of the importance and potential of research collaborations across art, anthropology and education
Pathways to achieving these impact objectives are outlined below.
Professional and practitioner groups (teachers, classroom-based practitioners and Educational Psychologists)
a) Develop practitioner reflexivity: Exhibitions, Odd celebration, training and CPD sessions, short film & user package will strengthen the critical reflexivity of Educational Psychologists, teachers and other classroom practitioners within the school, across the school's Cluster Group and in training opportunities for mental health organisations such as Catalyst Psychology to consider framings of children, families and ways of knowing.
b) Promote curriculum and school development
The outputs will inform teachers' reflective development across the curriculum, particularly in areas of the arts and inclusion
c) Initiate changes to training, school policy and practices
The project will produce a new 'Inclusion manifesto' to effect changes to school policy and practices. The work will produce practice development and training opportunities for NCB who work with children and families, national policy-makers and practitioners to research, innovate and establish best practice across the children's sector. The project outputs will force the reconsideration of labels, stereotypes, behaviour and diagnoses. Practitioners will also benefit from the use of interdisciplinary research methods.
Local community and the wider public: Community of Levenshulme, Manchester
a) Raising awareness of, and debating the importance of 'diversity', including eccentricity, quirkiness and non-conformity in communities
Families & local community will have opportunities to rethink and reflect positively on issues affecting their lives such as social cohesion and difference. The Odd Secret event among the other community-based exhibitions and celebrations will encourage community participation to harness the potency of differences in the community as a force for creativity, empowerment and policy critique.
Third Sector: Museums and galleries (The Showroom) and Charities (NCB)
a) Exhibition work
The Showroom is respected for projects that work with communities, artists and social issues to generate discussions, events and exhibitions, Odd resonates strongly with their 'Communal Knowledge' project. The school-based 'Odd Exhibition' feeds into The Showroom final exhibition, with the intention of offering a national event. The movement of the work from school to public exhibition, places new demands on the work, needing to communicate outside the school space not just within it, and generates spaces for discussions in the gallery about the role of the children as subjects and/or critics.
b) Creating new research networks
The Odd Lab will open up and sustain new networks for exploration of follow-on events and further funding opportunities. Through the Odd Celebration and Odd Exhibition, we will broaden the odd network to draw in other potential partners in the pursuit of further funding.
Publications
Pahl K
(2021)
Doing Research-Creation in School: Keeping an Eye on the Ball
in International Journal of Art & Design Education
Holmes R
(2023)
Spitting open the sky: eruptions of difference in an early years classroom
in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Truman S
(2020)
The Capaciousness of No: Affective Refusals as Literacy Practices
in Reading Research Quarterly
| Title | In Time |
| Description | This 17 minute film explores the director's experience of the moving undercurrents of a primary school classroom in Manchester, UK, in 2019. It combines lo-fi footage taken by the director and 4 and 5 year olds, with documentation from two movement workshops designed to communicate the director's experiences of taking up 'position of child'. By touching the same surfaces and rhythms together, the methodology is an experiment in the practice of 'more-than-oneness' rather than of mining the imagined depths of childhood. Amidst the physical distancing of a global pandemic, the radical connectivity of young humans to each other and all that surrounds them tells us that entering this same space, rather than imposed catch-up curricula from outside, is a pathway to healing. This film was made by Amanda Ravetz (Odd Project Co-I) |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Winner of Experiental Documentary film category in the Golden Bee International Children's Film Festival September 2021. |
| URL | https://www.oddproject.co.uk/threads/bodies |
| Description | This summary of the insights the Odd project research team came to will focus on 3 key areas: 1. Re-tuning to difference The research aimed to investigate the experiences of, and repercussions for, children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school. Over the period of the Odd project it became apparent that school remains a hostile place for those young people who experience the realities and impact of difference when it is perceived or encountered as problematic. A range of events in classrooms and around the school, together with accounts from an Educational Psychologist and parents working with us, suggest that some children feel awkward, misunderstood and isolated in school, whilst others were experienced by staff as recalcitrant, abject and illegible. Stories from children included feeling 'lonely', 'odd', 'out of place' and 'from a different planet'. It matters how school, as part of a busy and productive education system, contributes to a young person's learning about how, and where they 'fit'. The research foregrounded the imperative in education to re-tune the dominant eye (gaze), ear (listen) and thought (attune) away from the spaces, paces and practices of 'normalcy' (neurotypicality, heteronormativity, chrononormativity). The empirical work confirmed how deeply imbricated in normative assumptions and practices, educational apparatus and processes of schooling are and how firmly they are underpinned by developmental psychology's descriptions fermented as naturalised prescriptions that measure all children against the hegemony of the 'normal' child. Co-extensively however, our research revealed how the school accommodates and works with the difference (oddness) it holds. For example, the way the school's deaf unit worked to change the way the whole school experienced sound. Fitting into the informal spaces within the life of school, so often invisible and opaque, our research revealed how bodies that are different can 'tune in' the listening experience, the gaze, to worlds that feel out of place, out of tune, out of joint or out of time. However, this requires an undergoing that pays closer attention to a different way of relating to those things we consider fixed; rather than settling with normative and comparative forms of difference, there needs to be refusal to elide divergences in pursuit of conformity that characterises so called 'inclusive' practices associated with consuming all children into the dominant identity or school culture. Listening carefully, ethically to young people who taught us about difference, ethics and living with/in school through haptic, somatic, sonic and temporal registers. We augment our insights around this on the Odd website (https://www.oddproject.co.uk/), but in summary we recommend a deeper focus in school on bodies (movement, sitting, sensing, caring); measures (observation and surveillance, the power of normal, mixtures of moving surface, unsettling the lens); being together (research with children, companions impersonal intimacies); and tangles (what is a school, bodies and the material world, creating the new together, the more-than-one, being together/apart). To address these areas further, in terms of dissemination and impact we are seeking follow-on funding to generate resources that decentre colonial, psychological theories of child development; the power of individualism; the fixity of identity; the reductions of ocular- and logo-centrism; the fantasy of linear time; and challenge neurotypical representations of the school. 2. Challenging representational structures The Odd project aimed to contribute to interdisciplinary theory and methodology and develop protocols for collaborations across the fields of art, anthropology and education. The research yielded insights into the challenges and affordances of interdisciplinary working in pursuit of school-based affective inquiry. Recognising that school is constituted in, and by many structures and forms of representation, as is so much qualitative social science research, the Odd project was instantiated via loose, yet pre-existing humanist arts-based, artistic, educational and anthropological research methods. The empirical work in school, however indicated very quickly that the processes, methods, and practices we were each familiar with in our respective fields, over-determined and at the same time confined thought and practice, and closed off what might be thought and done in favour of doing, thinking, finding what exists. Across, and at times in between art, education and visual anthropology, more compositional methods were experimented with, often led by processes, materials, bodies and things and by working in relation to them - queering 'methods' and conventional research practices to reconstruct, rework practices, techniques and importantly making space for the children's practices to be seen. Examples of 'techniques' and artist practices we explored can be found on the Odd website, for example Position of Child (https://www.oddproject.co.uk/threads/bodies); art practice as research (https://www.oddproject.co.uk/threads/measures); and research-creation (https://www.oddproject.co.uk/threads/together/#together). 3. Affirming rather than effacing difference The research aimed to develop alternative inclusive education practices, and inform policy and professional training. We worked solely with one school, as the vital site for our inquiry into how to mobilise the potential of oddness for children, staff and families. The empirical work used the unique capacity of arts methods to erode simplistic and diagnostic tendencies to construct oddness/'difference' vs normal: instead engaging with the affective and qualitative nature of children's encounters in the school. Oddness, difference, and anomaly, were thought of as atmospheres that hover over the classroom. Documented classroom events or eruptions were moments when specific children, places, objects, actions fell into relation with particular incarnations of oddness - a pungent smell, a cold corridor, a banging radiator, a child's unexpected gesture or vocalisation. Oddness was then experienced as a kind of force or intensity entering into relations with processes of learning, behaving, empathising, participating, somehow altering these expected ways of relating/relations. Oddness and difference were deeply relational, always molecular, a moment, always making and unmaking itself. However often it can settle with, or stick to certain objects, places, and specific children. The task for our research in pursuit of generating alternative inclusive practices, informing policy and professional training was to assist in bringing to the fore some of these forces at play to try to effect more ethical and productive experiences for those so often caught up in odd events. To do this, our research practices drew attention to the affordances of thinking with the materiality of school, by calling upon registers that stir the minor, micro, architectural, physical, spatial, and ecological. The research registered how educational professionals' practices matter - we observed how the school's Education Psychologist, Headteacher, Deputy Headteacher / SendCo and some class teachers regularly practised looking sideways and through the order that usually obscures the affordances of transgression. They contributed to the Odd resources (see website). Follow-on funding seeks to work further with a wider range of education and child mental health professionals to develop resources that will help foreground the significance and affordances of children's affective, sensate and physical experiences of school often overlooked or regarded as unruly. |
| Exploitation Route | There are numerous ways that the outcomes of this funding are being taken forward and put to use by others. Non-academic route / Educational Professionals We have developed practical resources for thinking through, and with difference. These are hosted on the Odd website and are useful for teachers, teaching assistants, school governors, SENCo's and other educational professionals in the form of thinking threads and thought provocations. Ideally, they can be used in staff training, where discussion around the activities can be facilitated and implications for practice discussed. We have developed new forms of training that work towards mentally healthy school environments for marginalized young people. We developed and delivered a six-week Odd unit for final year Educational Psychology UG students. The unit was co-delivered by the project's PI and Co-Is along with members of Catalyst Psychology, the SENCo and a class teacher from the school where the project was based. The unit communicated the substantive insights around oddness, difference, divergence, inclusion and mental health that the project yielded. The teaching input / learning also explored the importance of methodology in engagement with young people, including research methodology, teaching methodology and Ed Psych assessment methodology. The Odd research team have been invited to keynote and lead workshops at the 2022 Catalyst Conference. This day conference typically attracts Educational Psychlogists, trainee Educational Psychologists, Special Ediucational Needs Co-ordinators and teachers from Greater Manchester but also nationally. This is an important platform for dissemination but also a vehicle for working with such an influential group of professionals to draw together a collection enunciation of alternation forms of inclusive education. Our proposal for follow-on funding will promote and disseminate innovative materials and embodied practices for a range of school-focused professionals that attune to children's affective, sensate and physical experiencing of school and augment our understandings of their health and wellbeing. A series of engagement activities will work towards developing resources, tools and training materials addressing the need for these noted in the DfE's report into Supporting Mental Health in Schools (2017) to sustain effective provision. Academic route The project has been taken forward and used by academic audiences in two key ways. The innovative project is revitalising interdisciplinary ways of working, by bringing art, visual anthropology and education together to focus on a specific site of inquiry. Our journal articles have contributed to this and further pieces, along with our book will contribute to do this over the unfolding months. We have developed techniques for post-qualitative inquiry through our undergoings with/in school, unsettling the need for method. These techniques are being disseminated and discussed in film festivals where 'In Time' a film made by Amanda Ravetz (Co-I), along with Jo Ray (RA) and the school children has been accepted and through various conference presentations. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Education,Healthcare |
| URL | https://www.oddproject.co.uk/ |
| Description | Our findings have been used in the following ways: The Odd research work has concluded with a body of at least 15 artistic research works, as well as academic analysis and publication at conferences, forthcoming journal articles and a book. With the singular site of one school, we recognised the project would require robust partnership working to ensure it could influence decision-making and leadership. Together with the school team itself, our other key collaborator has been Catalyst Psychology (https://www.catalystpsychology.co.uk/?msclkid=f5f4c8f9a5e811ecbafde29b70a8fde0), with whom we have been in partnership since the start of the project. This community interest company is a social enterprise offering child and educational psychology services throughout the Greater Manchester area. A member of Catalyst Psychology was on the project's Steering Group, participating in some of the research activities, and taught with the PI and Co-Is on the Odd unit of the BSc (Hons) Education & Psychology degree. Annually Catalyst Psychology hold a conference for Educational Psychologists, trainee Educational Psychologists, mental health professionals, Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators, teachers, teaching assistants, headteachers. It draws its audience from across Greater Manchester but also nationally. According to Catalyst Psychology, SENCO's and educational psychologists, always in short supply and under immeasurable pressure, have faced increasing levels of tension acting as gatekeepers to Education and Health Care Plans that bring financial support to children with particular diagnoses, leading to a demoralised and isolated community finding it hard to sustain their professional identities and principles in an under-resourced, measure-driven and post-pandemic environment. The annual conference is recognised as the most 'looked forward to' event in their calendar, where they can reflect, renew, learn and re-establish a shared sense of purpose. Dr Teresa Regan (Director) emailed the project's PI saying "The Odd project challenges the way we think about education. It is a great example of a partnership that is influencing our thinking as we look ahead to the next 10 years" (Teresa Regan, Director of Catalyst Psychology, email correspondence, 16th September 2021). Teresa then invited the Odd project team to lead the 2022 annual Catalyst Psychology conference. We will offer the conference's keynote lecture, followed by a series of workshops led by the Co-Is and RA and based on both the substantive insights the project had yielded and also the research methodologies that have so inspired Catalyst Psychology's thinking with regards to their own assessment and diagnostic methodologies. We have been actively securing funds to grow the scope, reach and impact of the conference to reach a broader base of professionals and policy-makers, which will enable us to identify and invite new communities/participants; inviting National Children's Bureau staff; developing a conference exhibition; 'Odd' artworks for the conference space (Gorton Monastery); developing a 'history of educational psychology' and 'arts and education' book exhibition drawn from Sheffield Hallam and Manchester Metropolitan Universities' collections; a film show around schooling drawn from Manchester Met's Northern Film archive; print materials that participants can take home; and also the formation of a manifesto at the conference, with participants, that can be circulated post-event to education and governmental leaders. Another key activity will be the re-making of one of the Odd artworks, 'School Photo Day' that invited young people to remake their school photo. Conference participants will be invited to make a new version of this, directly putting themselves in the place of the children. Throughout the entire day we will work with a graphic artist to document this and to produce a design piece after the event- not only giving everyone a sense of renewed collective purpose, but also producing something we can distribute to a much wider range of people, including policy makers. SENCO's and Educational Psychologists who have been on 'the front line' of the extraordinary negative impact of the pandemic on children's mental health. Catalyst Psychology believe this event can be instrumental in rebuilding morale and a sense of collective action and identity. We believe the impact of the Odd project has already led Catalyst Psychology to appreciate the affordances of thinking and beginning to find ways to work differently with the idea of labels, diagnosis, difference and divergence, affecting the effectiveness of the organisations services and influencing their thinking as they look ahead to the next 10 years. Whatever comes of the work they do and subsequent to the 2022 conference, any changes in thinking, doing and broader practices, no matter how slight, will impact on the quality of life of one or multiple children who currently fall outside of the narrow confines of 'normal' in school. Another area of impact growth across 2022 - 2023 has been with the museum sector. In response to the Odd project's work with artists and educational practitioners, we were invited by Manchester Art Gallery to bring a team together to respond to the ESRC's Exhibition Funds call. produce an experimental exhibition that overturns conventional assumptions about very young children, positioning them as active contributors to the public space of the museum. Becky Shaw (Co-I Odd project) and Rachel Holmes (PI Odd project) will be working with the museum's curatorial team, museum educators and early years practitioners to develop artistic curatorial practices and participatory exhibition-making through the spatial, material and embodied knowledges of young children and their families in Manchester. The work will mobilise as well as contribute to learning from our collaborative early years and Odd project's artistic research. If funded, this exhibition work will combine museum studies, early years education and art as vital in the creation of new forms of decolonising museological praxis. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Education,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Keynote and Workshops leading Catalyst Psychology Conference |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Odd Project Tool Kit |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| URL | https://www.oddproject.co.uk/ |
| Description | Six week course: Odd feeling different in the world of education |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Alma Park School |
| Organisation | Alma Park Primary School |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The research is based in, and co-produced with the school community at Alma Park. Over the first year of the project we have been working closely with the school to encourage them to think about ways we can share our different knowledges of the substantive issue of 'oddness' and methodological approaches to researching this in a school context. We have brought our expertise of arts and humanities research methods to the school community and have been working with the children and staff on issues about ethics, particularly co-produced consent forms; visual methods; practice as research; and ethnography. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Alma Park School have hosted all the research activities undertaken by the three Co-Is, artist consultant and Research Associate. They have been incredibly open and supportive of all the school-based work. We have worked across the whole school, for example done Odd assemblies, an Odd Box exhibition, a film projection night, but also focused more specifically on age phases, ie nursery, reception, Years 4, 5 and 6 so far. All staff have been accommodating. The teachers all attended an Inset session about the project so far and the school has accommodated the Steering Group meetings (x3 per year). |
| Impact | Staff Inset Film Projection |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | 'Odd' for Christmas-participation in whole school christmas event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The school in Manchester, the site of our research, hosts a number of Christmas events. The 'Odd' team worked with staff to co-ordinate a welcoming festive event that would celebrate the winter and also invite families and children to share the 'Odd' work in progress. The school provided outdoor catering, while Steve Pool presented a projection show on the outside of the school building. The projection brought together images and video work done by Pool and Pahl with the school children during the year. The projection used data mapping to connect images with the school building, creating fascinating relationships and generating a great atmosphere. In the school hall Amanda Ravetz invited the school community to watch the film made while in 'position of child' in early years. The film was made using a mobile film unit made by Jo Ray. For the evening event, parents and children were invited to draw on a long roll of paper, making visual relationships to the film. Jo Ray and Becky Shaw used large wooden frames and spot lighting to show a selection of images of children hiding with 'skins' of the school (paper costumes made by children, using large scale prints). The event was well attended and there were many interesting conversations about the 'Odd' project and the experiences of the children. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Article on Arts Activities and the Curriculum for 'Research Intelligence' the British Educational research association journal |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This is an article about arts activities and the curriculum which describes how art can be linked to curriculum. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | EdDoc Talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Talk to a group of EdD students about Odd and difference-in-itself - ways to bring theory into research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Education & Psychology UG Students Option |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 'Odd: feeling different in the world of education' was presented as an option unit for final year students on the BA (Hons) Psychology and Education degree in March 2020. It will also be incorporated into the British Psychological Society's accredited BSc (Hons) Educational Psychology degree from 2021. Due to COVID19, the unit will be taught as a block unit online January - February 2021. It interrogates the experiences of, and repercussions for, children who do not find it easy to 'fit in' at school. Schools can be difficult places to grow up for some children in a stifling culture where the pressure for everyone to conform can be overwhelming. On that basis, this unit goes on a creative journey into the concept of 'odd-ness'. Indicative Content: Qualitative and quantitative studies will be examined to analyse how processes that define normality in terms of its opposite (abnormality; odd-ness) determine some children as 'outcasts' or 'misfits': the learning disabled child (Ryan, 2006); the gender non-conforming child (Gerouki, 2010; Biegel, 2010); children between cultures (Eekelaar, 2004); the gifted and talented child (Geake and Gross, 2008); the children with 'attention deficit' (Harwood & Allan, 2014) etc. Some are identified as both lacking some essential capacity and simultaneously as too profuse (Bohlmann, 2017). 'Treatment', 'rehabilitation' or special interventions are generally prescribed, with hopes of an eventual 'cure' (Wolff, 1995). However this remedial attitude to difference renders society fixed and ill-equipped for change (Runswick-Cole, 2008), and leaves school structures largely intact, with enduring consequences for children who do not achieve 'normality' (Deschenes et al, 2001). The unit aims to interrupt these fixed structures and deficit views of odd-ness by paying close attention to hidden forces, and the complex material-discursive entanglements that produce difference and its effects in school. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Film screening of In TIme, India/online |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Film screening of the 17 experimental film made in collaboration with children from the partner primary school. The film was screened online live and was followed wth an after screening discussion between the festival director , Rachel Holmes and Amanda Ravetz. https://www.facebook.com/goldenbeeindia/videos/570780027378726 The film won the festival prize in the experimental documentary category. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.facebook.com/goldenbeeindia/ |
| Description | Film screening of In Time at Riga Pasaules Film Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Odd Project's film In Time was accepted for showing at Riga Pasaules Film Festival in April. Amanda Ravetz (Odd project Co-I and film director) will be live for a Q&A session. Feedback from audience members: The Festival's Programme Creator Marta Kucza, who introduced it, said that it manages to have multiple rather than singular subjectivities - the more-than-oneness really translated to the audience. She also said how she felt, in this festival about healing, this film was healing for the audience. Another audience member commented how it would change how they were with their young child when he wants to stop and look at things. Another piece of feedback was that it was moving. Generally when Amanda explained about vegetal consciousness and what it was like to be able to drop out of adult responsibility, planning, instructing children etc, (whilst retaining ethical response ability) people confirmed that this had come across strongly in the film. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://filmfreeway.com/RPFF |
| Description | Grasping the nettle: Ethics in research with children, young people and families |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This event offered a space for three of the co-Is from the Odd project to reflect on the prickly ethical issues encountered when working within and across disciplines in our research with children and young people at Alma park School. Mindful of how academic research ethics governance has increasingly tended to focus its gaze on protection from institutional litigation and loss of prestige rather than on children and young people's perspectives of how and why they would like to be involved in research (or not), the Co-Is (together with other invited speakers) were brought together to offer alternative conceptualisations of ethics as collaborative and transactional endeavour that evolves through research practice. Papers given: Paper 1: Responsivity to children, responsibility to video work: staying in the middle of things when videoing and negotiating permissions with children, parents and staff in an exhibition context, Amanda Ravetz During the Odd project (AHRC), I spent time in Alma Park Primary School in 'Position of Child'. Supported by Rachel Holmes in nursery for an intensive week, I shed many of my adult habits of leaning into the future, (re)discovering an enhanced receptivity to human and non-human companions in all their multiplicity. In reception class, assisted by Jo Ray, many of the children (and I) used 'kidcams' to video freely during periods of non-directed learning and play. Finding that the children were disinterested in reviewing or editing this material, I worked with dance artist Anna Macdonald to lead workshops exploring some of the emerging themes, and a film editor to produce a 17-minute video out all these materials, for eventual screening at film festivals and conferences. Referencing the complex ethical considerations involved in this 'rolling' method, I will reflect on my ambition to 'stay in the middle of things' whilst navigating the interplay of responsiveness and responsibility, permission and constraint. Paper 2: 'Say Cheese': exploring consent, choice and performance in the 'shutter moment' of school portraits, Becky Shaw and Jo Ray We will reflect on our work on the 'School Photo Day', during the Odd project (AHRC), which involved inviting Yr6 children to show us how they 'do' their school photo and inviting them to do their 'own' additional versions. While the former implies a constrained institutional performance and the latter some kind of operation of freedom, the negotiation of expectation, power and adult/child roles complicated any easy distinction. While children were part of this negotiation, and ethical processes and parental consent were strictly followed, the level of 'potential exposure' in the images made us uncomfortable about their use in further work, leading us to dwell on the double-edged ethical sword of making images with children, while making images for audiences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Haunts #2: 'The Haunted Home' Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Hosted by Sheffield Hallam University Haunts #2 is themed around the home as a place of haunting, and taking a very broad view what may haunt a home we will weave together a range of scholarship and perspectives. Odd presentation: The haunted home from home: why school has never been modern Jo Ray, Lecturer in Design, University of Derby, & Research Associate: 'Odd: Feeling Different in the World of Education' MMU. Becky Shaw, Reader in Fine Art, Sheffield Institute of Arts, Sheffield Hallam University. During a three-year cross-disciplinary research project to explore children's experiences of 'not fitting in at school,' we explore the ways that the material substance of school generates and interacts with children's experiences, curriculum and school 'time'. As such, the home comes to haunt the school, as also do the material remnants of both educational pasts and futures, and their related political aims and atmospheres. These hauntings come in many different orders: materials that literally leak from home to school, the homely structure of 'carpet time; the presence of the miniature domestic; attitudes to behaviour 'management' in the 'chill out room'; legacies of attitudes to knowledge, work and labour, found in store cupboards and teachers' drawers; haunted typography; anachronistic technologies transformed for and by, play; and continuous presences of school customs. Additionally, children themselves find ghosts in school: 'jiin' or 'zombies' under the ground in the playground, and 'bloody Mary's' in the bathroom. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://lukebennett13.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/time-to-show-the-chair-the-door-haunting-wrestling-an... |
| Description | Impact Blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The purpose of this blog is to share an aspect of the Odd project research activities that include staff at SHU. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
| URL | https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/odd-project/?fbclid=IwAR3gFB7vzdzFoCT1FR6aHxLvipWcO9res4n8Hg1HsNU... |
| Description | Invited Keynote, Sweden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | February 2019, invited keynote to an interdisciplinary group of academics and researchers at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. The aim of the talk was to discuss the importance of interdisciplinarity in childhood research in order to unsettle traditional models of child development and educational research research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Keynote Lecture Brighton |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Opening keynote speech to postgraduate research students at the annual congress meeting of the AHRC doctoral training partnerhship Techne. Attended by approximately 100 PGRs and their supervisors, and the PVC for Research and Enterprise. Discussion of the concept of undrgoing in research methods using Odd as a case study. Positive feedback afterwards from attendees on conceptual challenges and practicalities of carrying out ethnographic research in schools using artistic research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.techne.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/207613/TECHNE-Congress-July-2019-Provisional-Pro... |
| Description | Keynote at Moonbeams Conference on 27th February at MAC, Birmingham |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Invited Keynote Speaker at Arts Connect's Moonbeams Early Years National Conference 2023 (https://artsconnect.co.uk/early-years-conference-2023/). The keynote was based on the findings of the Odd project, specifically in relation to young children's Identity and Resilience and the importance of artistic research to engage with these complex matters in educational contexts. Moonbeams provides a programme of action research, training and professional development, conferences and seminars, resources, interactive social networks including a Facebook community, and Podcasts to support creative and reflective practice for artists and educationalists in early years arts and creativity. The audience was a mixture of 124 Early Years Educators, representatives from the arts, heritage and cultural sectors, including libraries, Academics, Local Authority Services and artists interested in early years and interested in how art can transform the lives of young children. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://artsconnect.co.uk/early-years-conference-2023/ |
| Description | Movement Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 3rd February and 9th March 2020, 2 two-hour movement workshops, led by dance artist Anna Macdonald took place. What were the workshops for? Amanda Ravetz (Co-I, Odd project) has recently undertaken a period of research in 'Position of Child', becoming a class member in Nursery and Reception years at a primary school. Her experiences have been affective and physical - being moved in eddies of children, running from place to place, aware of shapes - lines, circles, clumps. We were trying out different ways of communicating experiences from 'position of child'. The first workshop helped us prepare for the second workshop for the Deputy Headteacher and SENCo, Reception class teacher and Educational Psychologist from the school community where Amanda is undertaking the research. What did participants experience? The workshop involved a series of simple movement tasks and games designed to generate a flavour of Amanda's experiences in the school. They do not need any dance experience to do it, but we were moving around together. The sessions lasted two hours and included a break in the middle and time at the end for reflection. Video We also videoed the session, with the camera as an integral part. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Odd Lab - Children hosted event. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This was an 'Odd Lab' curated by the children together with artist Steve Pool. Children showed their films to the team, and then encouraged an atmosphere of play and experimentation. The staff of the school joined in with these activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Odd Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | As the research is diverse, emerging and complex, we produced a newsletter for parents and carers to share updates and keep them informed of what's going on. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Odd Website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We launched an Odd project website due to interest in the project. We aim to make this much more interactive as the project develops and will use it to locate any resources, newsletters, a blog etc. This website is for the general public, but also for young people, schools, parents/carers, other professionals with an interest in difference such as Educational Psychologists, Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services professionals (CAMHS) and organisations with an interest in bullying and young children's mental health, eg Young Minds, the National Children's Bureau and the Anti-bullying Alliance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/esri/odd-project/about/ |
| Description | Outdoor Projection of film - 'Feeling Odd' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This was an outdoor project against the side of the school to showcase a set of films made by the young people about the experience of 'Feeling Odd' in the world of Education. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | PG Lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited lecture to PG students and professional practitioners about the Odd project. The aim of the session was to provoke thinking differently and approaching research in innovative ways. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation at a conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A group of young people from the school presented their films and research about 'Feeling Odd' to a group of researchers and practitioners at a conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/esri/news-and-events/detail/?id=10187 |
| Description | Presentation to the BERA conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A group of young people presented their research to a group of academics as part of a symposium on the 'Odd' project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.bera.ac.uk/conference/bera-conference-2019 |
| Description | School / Parent & Carers / Steering Group Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We provide termly newsletters that go out to school staff, parents & carers. These are also housed on the project website that is accessed by the project Steering Group. The newsletters cover the activities of Co-Is, the RA and PI over the previous term and give some indication of up-coming events that might be of interest to the wider school community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| Description | School visit |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The whole year group (year 4) from the school visited the Brooks Building. They made films and explored the Oddness of the Building. They engaged in craft activities and developed an understanding of universities. These were then reflected in films they made about the experiences they had. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Symposium at American Education Research Association Annual Conference, Toronto 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The AERA conference brings together over 40,000 international researchers in education. 'Odd Encounters: Other-Than-Conventional Relations in School' was a symposium, where 'Odd' research in progress was presented . Maggie McCLure (MMU) and Steve Pool explored 'Odd Theory', drawing together experiences of working with children (and the children themselves via video recording) and contemporary ideas of difference, emergence, and limited notions of co-production. Rachel Holmes and Becky Shaw presented 'Odd Experiment 1: Sensing the School', that reflected on experiments with listening and viewing instruments, to see the relationship between child and school environment anew. Christina MacRae (MMU) and Amanda Ravetz presented 'Odd Companions: a snaggle of voices' which explored the possibility of a felt understanding of children's social relationships in early childhood, and explored researcher positioning in the early years classroom. The 'Odd' team were also joined by Kelly Clark Keefe from University of Vermont, exploring 'odd' experiments with HE students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Teacher Inset Training |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 14th November the project researchers ran an Inset training session for teachers and Senior Management at Alma Park School. We aimed to discuss how each, perhaps seemingly disparate research activity relates to the idea ands inquiry into oddness and also bears some relationship with each other. This is a complex research project that has a number of Co-Is, an artist consultant and a Research Associate all engaged in research activities in different classes around the school. It was important to open up a discussion about the research so far and share our emerging sense of what the research is about. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | UG Lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited lecture about the Odd research project for L4, 5 and 6 UG Childhood and Education Studies students. The aim was to get them thinking about the importance of curiosity in research and using innovative interdisciplinary methods of inquiry. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
| Description | UG Unit: Odd, feeling different in the world of education |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The whole team of researchers, plus two of our project partners (Alma Park Primary School and Catalyst Psychology) engaged in teaching a six week UG unit on the BSc Education & Psychology degree programme at Manchester Metropolitan University. The aim of the unit was to disseminate the project to students, encouraging them to evaluate how up to 3 different artistic research methods might affect understandings of difference in an education context and to consider how by linking theoretical materials and empirical methods to 'oddness', difference in education can be understood in new ways. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Young Advisors' Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Odd Workshop, Young Research Advisors (YRA) session 9 June 2018 13 YRAs attended a training and discussion session held in London around the word 'Odd'. NCB and the ABA were unsure about our choice and use of this word, so although the research team and school were very committed to the word, we wanted to hear young people's opinions about this term. Session background: • Discussions around connotations of 'odd' - wanted to get CYP perspective • 45 minutes session, simple PP • YRAs - group of CYP trained in research, used to be involved in research projects. Usually of a different nature, though • 12 CYP present, aged 9 to 17. Mix of gender, ethnicity, geography, social background. • Described how 'odd-ness' is conceptualised in project and asked for feedback • Feedback given through open discussion, description of odd things/experiences and a creative exercise Discussion of word: • The term was seen as rather abstract • Not a word they'd normally use. The YRAs generally got the meaning, although it didn't come intuitively but required explanation, reflection and discussion. • As we moved into • Words the YRAs tended to use instead: o Out of the ordinary o Random o Different o Weird o (But they recognised the possible negative connotations of these words) • Reflects unpredictability • Generally positive of the word Discussion of concept: • It is received differently by different generations (who also use different words) • It changes over time. Homosexuality mentioned as example. • It is influenced by society and people in society • It depends on context and environment • Thinking about oddness makes you able to spot it more quickly • Maybe it's difficult to pick up if you're not used to thinking about it Outputs: • Asked YRAs to express whatever came into their minds with the word 'odd/odd-ness'. • Pic 1 ('Happy Families' game if one card is missing) o Odd number of cards. o Experience of playing with family, and that one card is missing o Possible negative connotation as it focusses on an absence, something incomplete, not working. • Pic 2 (abstract drawing, but element of wearing warm clothes in sunny weather) o Different, unexpected o Might not be visible, but linked to conversation about odd clothes, e.g. wearing sunglasses in the rain or winter clothes in the summer. • Rap (note the use of 'abstract') o 'Pot' reference from conversation - experience of guy rolling a joint on the bus o Apparent contradiction between 'not out of the ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. That and reference to abstract could indicate that the concept is difficult to approach. • Conclusion: o Concept can be abstract and difficult to work with. o Understanding may be partly shaped by other inclusiveness campaigns that might fetishise odd-ness more. Observations: • YRAs found the project refreshingly different from the sort of social research they usually are involved in. • The concept is less intuitive than we thought - it needed explanation, but then discussions took off. • BUT: experienced/older YRAs more engaged. Might be a result of training, but might also be maturity/abstract thinking. • Expressing oddness creatively was appealing to some, while others were put off (this didn't seem to be related to age/YRA experience). • Some of those who might struggle to 'fit in' at school were also those struggled most with the concept. Some were very reluctant to engage with the concept as it made them feel uncomfortable (they didn't want to open that can of worms). • General impression: genuine interest and a willingness to play with the concept. BUT it might require some explanation, particularly for younger children and those who feel out of place. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |