Autumn Term
Monday 9 October, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: Inclusive higher education: widening participation for disabled students
In this session Dave Bainton and Artemi Sakellariadis presented ongoing research into experiences of disabled students at the University of Bristol. The event focused on how values are articulated and how they are reflected in everyday practice, and explored what might be getting in the way of developing more inclusive higher education for disabled students.
Monday 6 November, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
ANI-Net planning meeting
This is an annual event providing an opportunity for network members to discuss potential themes for future narrative open space sessions, as well as to consider and plan more actvities for the Network.
Friday 24 – Monday 27 November, Ammerdown Centre, Wiltshire
Collaborative writing retreat: Remembering Sue
This writing retreat entitled ‘Remembering Sue’ was open to anybody who took part in collective biography/collaborative writing events with Sue Porter, coordinator of our Narrative Open Space, 2012-17. This was a self-financing event, where participants covered all expenses. 3 free/reduced cost places were made available to research students/low income participants. The task of this group was be to write a final chapter for the forthcoming book of our collaborative writings ‘Artful collaborative inquiry spaces’ edited by Jane Speedy and Sue Porter, as a written memorial to Sue Porter.
Monday 4 December, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: Making meaning of life changing events – moments of resistance
This session followed last year’s session on this theme led by Margaret Page. In the words of the facilitator:
This is a space to develop the theme of ‘making meaning of life changing events’ introduced in an earlier session last term.
It could be, if there is sufficient interest, the beginning of a proposed collaboratve writng project.
In this session we will explore in our writing and reading moments of resistance- where we have resisted dominant narratives and made our own meaning of a significant event.
We may explore the impact of a single event or a series of events that have led us to reconsider who we are relation to others, how we are perceived and perceive others, what is important, or no longer important to us, what we desire- or no longer desire to be or to do.
I am interested to explore subtle processes of shift and change that may be embodied, and revisited, in the aftermath of such an event, or events, and how we make meaning of them.
Please come prepared to write, to read your writing, to listen, and to write again. We will aim to build up a collage of experiences of life changing events and of the shifting meanings that we and others attribute to them.
If there is interest, and potential, I am hoping to form a writing group to explore this further.
Spring Term:
Monday 5 February, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: Writing Violence in a postwar context: is this another victim story?
This session was facilitated by Goya Wilson, Research Associate at the University of Bristol and ANI-Net member. In the words of the facilitator:
In this session I will share an aspect of my doctoral research on testimonial writing and memory-work which was a collaborative effort with a group of people who carry the stigma of “the children of terrorists” in the aftermath of the Peruvian civil war (1980s-1990s). I want to share my dilemmas on writing violence and “victim stories”… and explore together with you the resonances of such dilemmas in the present when it comes to state violence and in other contexts in which the construction of victim stories takes place.
Friday 22 – Sunday 24 February, Edinburgh; and
Friday 2 – Sunday 4 March, Bristol
Non-residential follow-up writing weekends
These writing weekends were attended by those who took part in the Ammerdown weekend in November, and other ANI-Net members who have previously engaged in collaborative writing activities with Sue Porter/Jane Speedy. Writers met in order to complete the ‘Remembering Sue’ chapter and write the introduction to ‘artful collaborative inquiry spaces’. These events were also self-financing.
Monday 5 March, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: Diaries, notebooks and journals: Writing with in/visible ink in becoming other through immersion within entanglements between discourses of self and non/human materiality.
This session was facilitated by Ken Gale, lecturer at Plymouth University and ANI-Net member. In the words of the facilitator:
I have boxes and boxes of diaries, notebooks and journals that I have drawn, scribbled and written in since January 1965 when I was 17 years old. Some of what is in them has come to public life in books, papers and conference presentations. Most of what is written in them rests between their pages, mainly unread since the day of their creation. I have a powerful sensing that there is a processual, nascent, always becoming and articulative relationality between these essentially private musings and makings and the way in which I present a writing self to a wider world. Now as I enter an eighth decade of living with a curiosity that troubles the slumber of this prose, these drawings, these poems, rants and rhetorical scats, I have decided to open up some kind of inquiry into them. This session is therefore intended to be non representational, to reek of exemplification and to offer experimental openings into the dark mercuriality and infinite multiplicities of those movements and moments of this always now you see me, now you don’t.
Summer Term
Tuesday 24 April, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.10
Book launch: Madness as Methodology: Bringing Concepts to Life in Contemporary Theorising and Inquiry.
This is an event to celebrate the publication of Madness as Methodology: Bringing Concepts to Life in Contemporary Theorising and Inquiry. Written by Ken Gale, lecturer at Plymouth University and ANI-Net member, and published by Routledge, this book explores how research is conceptualised and what impact this has on the research output. Light refreshments will be available.
Monday 14 May, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: All that is left unsaid: Exploring the hidden spaces between, behind, before the surface of our shared experiencing
This session will be facilitated by Melissa Dunlop, Doctoral Student at the University of Edinburgh and ANI-Net member; Melissa writes:
There is so much to say that cannot be said – whether it is held back intentionally or unintentionally – because there isn’t room, because we have adopted a particular culture of engagement, because we actively censor ourselves, because we have no words to describe it, or because we are simply not attending to certain aspects of our experiencing – these may be our own histories, memories evoked, or fantasies about the inner worlds of others – present or not present. How might these silent layers intervene into our surface conversations? How might they interact with one another, all the while hidden? And how can we ever know?
I am curious about how we might identify and represent the ongoing presence of experiences that are (shared but) not shared between us – and to see if we can perceive any interactivity between our (apparently separate) silent realms.
Using a combination of drawing and writing, I hope we may use the space to explore together our experiences of the silence – the silenced – the dark matter in which the materiality of our shared reality is embedded, and to see what we can discern about the rela=onality of these bodily separate psychic spaces.
Monday 4 June, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: Making Meaning of Life Changes – an inter-generational dialogue
This session will be facilitated by Margaret Page, Senior Research Fellow at UWE and ANI-Net member. Margaret writes:
The session offers an opportunity for research students new to collaborative inquiry, to join with those more experienced in order to practice writing inquiry as a research approach. Our inquiry will focus on the impact of significant life changes at different points in our life cycles.
The inter-generational focus of this session is inspired by the collaborative writing inquiry that we began in June 2017.
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