The conversation between myself (Hannah Raine), Dr Will Mason, and Saeed Brasab from the Unity Gym Project was an opportunity to reflect, connect and think again about how relationships between universities and community partners can be forged in a genuine way.
It was also a chance to consider a new way of working with communities that intentionally does not follow the “traditional” patterns and practices of university research.
The topics covered in this conversation are relevant for academics and researchers who value highly the principles of meaningful participatory research, at all stages in their research career.
A podcast episode was created following this conversation, edited by Kitty Turner at kitechy. Music: Y'know by Miyamoto.
Link below.
The Unity Gym Project arose out of a need within a community, and follows through that underlying principle with everything that it does- everything is led by the community that it is based within, and the young people that live there. Even the name ‘Unity’ came out of consultation with young people about what they wanted this setting to represent. Saeed knew that health and fitness brought people together in a way that nothing else did, and he knew that it could work alongside the principles of youth work.
Will Mason connected with the Unity Gym Project via volunteer youth work he had carried out in Broomhall, as well as attending the gym as a user. Saeed and Will started working together collaboratively, responding to the needs of the young people in the community, and thinking about ways the gym could work with those young people. In addition to his work as a volunteer youth worker and the skills he had gained there, Will was also able to use the research skills and knowledge he had gained in his work in the university to support the work the gym was doing. Together they sought to find ways to develop, enhance and sustain that work. There was a reciprocity between the knowledge Will had as a researcher and the knowledge Saeed had as a youth worker. The focus was on the Gym first and foremost, whilst keeping an eye on ways that research could serve their needs, strategically using university resources to help the community.
One example of this collaboration is the short documentary ‘The Unity Gym Project’, created by local professional filmmaker, Brett Chapman- his collection of other work can be seen at his web page brettinthecity. This project was funded by a Community Cohesion Fund Sheffield City Council and drew on University resources from public engagement and knowledge exchange teams to premiere the film and to fund a local organisation to host it.
The original impetus for the film came from a frustration young people in Broomhall had regarding how they were and are stigmatised, racialised and criminalised by damaging dominant narratives. There was a desire to drive a counter narrative, and find out a way to do that in a way that made sense to a wider audience. Collectively, a film making project came out of conversations had with the young people, and the desire was for that film to make an impact.
This film captured the young people’s understanding of what their Broomhall looked like and what was significant to them, including The Bagel Shack, the football, and the ‘white bars’. These are places that are significant to the everyday lives of these young people and a source of pride for them, but that would not have been obvious without having those conversations. The end result was a powerful, emotive and highly professional film that challenged these stigmatising narratives in a way that was positive and inspirational, and that again was responsive to the needs of those young people, and allowed them to take the lead.
An article reflecting on what was learnt by this project can be found here.
The conversation also covered the chapter "Radically Slow? Reflections On Time, Temporality, And Pace In Engaged Scholarship". This chapter captures ongoing conversations about time which came up frequently in the Gym- the challenges of time, the limitations of what time is available, the conflicts between different commitments which all demand time, whilst recognising the value of resisting that demand and the need for a certain ‘pace’, and working in a way that is deliberately and intentionally slow.
Will noted that “There’s often pressure to rush through work. And that pressure really sits in tension with the speed of relationships which can be much slower and more gradual, and the level of commitments that people have and bring with them to projects.”
Saeed agreed. “It’s the balancing of that isnt’ it. The balancing of those commitments that everyone has.”
‘Think big, start small, go slow’ reflects a careful balance of desires, intentions and reality. The desire to think big and have high aspirations when it comes to co-production also needs to take into consideration that the output needs to be meaningful to those who are involved. Starting with goals that are too big, too unwieldy and too diffuse will inevitably lead to disappointment and unfinished projects, while setting out clear, achievable goals is a way of ensuring that the process is positive, and gives the opportunity to build on that in the future. Much academic research sets out with big goals and tries then to achieve too much, within a context that makes this very difficult and leaves those researchers disheartened.
During this conversation, we also reflected on what might need to change within academic work to really understand what balancing needs of different groups really means. There was a sense of resistance to that ‘top down pressure’ which results in disengagement from communities, and resistance to the current narrative which represents a historical approach of extracting knowledge.
I reflected during the conversation about how I can apply this advice- ‘think big, start small, go slow’ to not only my own PhD research but also other research projects I work on, as well as how it makes sense to the PGR community I am a part of. How to balance this advice, which is so important and valuable, with those demands from the academy? How can it be resisted? How can we start small, when the expectations of what can be achieved seem to be so high? When a project is weighed up at the end, the expectation is for something ‘big’ to be produced. But maybe that is part of the courage resistance requires, and the choice to make a commitment to a certain set of principles (meaningful participative research) and sticking with that despite the challenges that come up. Will gave a perspective on how to carry out this research- “if the priorities of the institution fit, try not following them.”
During the interview, we discussed some examples of work that manages to negotiate the tensions and challenges of working across different spaces and fields. These are linked to below:
Resistance Lab Resistance Lab is a grassroots collective that uses education, technology and research to find new ways to resist state violence.
Mason, W. (2021). On staying: Extended temporalities, relationships and practices in community engaged scholarship. Qualitative Research : QR, 146879412110493. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211049318
Mason, W. & The Unity Gym Project (2020) Article: #unitydoc: Participatory Filmmaking as Counter-Storytelling, Youth & Policy, https://www.youthandpolicy.org/articles/unitydoc/.
Mason W & The Unity Gym Project (2021) Radically slow? Reflections on time, temporality and pace in engaged scholarship In Clift B, Gore J, Gustafsson S, Bekker S, Costas Batlle I & Hatchard J (Ed.), Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry: Theories, Methods and Practices (pp. 142-157). Routledge
Mason, W. (2022) Book Review: The Critical Methodologies Collective (ed.) (2022) The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research: Addressing Moments of Discomfort. Oxon: Routledge. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14687941221082262
The Critical Methodologies Collective (2022) Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research : Addressing Moments of Discomfort. Taylor & Francis.