Several months have passed since our final session together and the data is in. I launched a book (Popular Song), I taught a new course on poetry for Killingworth Library and New Writing North and guided students through countless final projects and dissertations.
Like any useful and actionable data reporting, it’s worth highlighting some of the context. As discussed previously, our initial scope of delivery was for three groups across Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland. Our requested maximum was 36 people and we were tasked with delivering to 198 people. The brief was to deliver to groups in Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland and despite selecting preferences for an even split of groups from both regions, we were given only groups in Redcar & Cleveland, so unfortunately we have no data for Middlesbrough. We specifically requested to work with over 50s. In our largest group, we had a mixture of people who were not all within the target age bracket for the project, so this data represents those that were within the bracket of 50+. The spaces we were given were not conducive to setting up printmaking materials or writing poetry (for example having uninterrupted time, a quiet classroom or silent space in which to read and work, a sink that we could use for washing materials and preparing silk screens, etc). All three spaces were interrupted by the delivery of lunch, bingo, a busy bar, dance performances, (at one point a lengthy school Christmas choir concert) and pub quizzes, which meant that the workshop had to come to a halt to allow these other events to take place over and through our delivery. It also means that data in some cases was also pulling in the effects of these interrupting events. In each instance, I asked participants about their feelings about the activity we had been doing together specifically without being leading, e.g. “How did you get on? How did you feel about it?”
In total I delivered nineteen workshops, eleven of which I delivered as the only facilitator in the room. Of the remainder, I was the only available facilitator at the start of the session for all but five workshops. There was an expectation in this context to have meaningful conversations about end of life planning. Talking about death with someone to the blisteringly loud soundtrack of “Go Grease Lightnin’!” is potentially not ideal and it was therefore difficult to obtain meaningful responses on this. This is not a complaint but context.
Bravo Mike
For Mike
Part of the destination’s the journey,
even so, Australia, Australia,
some of what you took, you still have;
out on the shingle, I find myself staring
over the brim of the mist like Loftus slate,
or a welder’s well-weathered visor,
bearing the startle of sun-freckled sea,
to a tattooed picket fence
of legs on the Sydney quay.
I hadn’t seen the kind of strangers
who’d push past one another’s shoulders
in the November heat just to see your estate
of steel, the semaphore of a hand raised
met by two hands raised, flags waved,
the ship, understated, cutting the ribbon
of water with the assurance of navyhood.
The ease of it, the rest of England on ice,
daybreak under the palms at Surfer’s Paradise.
Newcastle New South Wales, steaks
thicker than paving slabs, torn from the hot metal
stick of the grill, turned, in the smoke,
chatting while alternating hemispheres,
the muzzle flashes of coals, the split open
of glistening beers meeting your hand,
the hug, humbled by the welcome,
as if friends for years as we now are,
the names of plants, the waratah,
the wattle, the plum, the bluebell and rose.
You should come with us, to the bounce
and tip of the jeep grinding the ground,
shadows that stagger in the scan
of the searchlight on the scrub, hunting for rabbits,
not with anoraks and gloves, but t-shirts
and caps and twenty year old guns,
trained on the bucking of tails,
like white horses rising in gales
out on the South China Sea.
From there to Indonesia, the Philippines,
Papua New Guinea, then Fiji, where
visitors dig canoes straight out of the sand
soft and white as lambswool, to glide
across the sea’s inner glade, clear as clear sky
reflected in a gallon of rain. And over
Christmas, New Zealand came up for air
and two of us were married there. Next
across the threshold India and Hong Kong
then back to Harrogate and sure,
home before long. In those days
it was hard to telephone your mates,
now there’s email and Facebook
and five of us signed up, were on different ships,
with different routes and saw times change by degrees,
by tide and by title, by fin and sea-fern,
by watch and by armament, by bight and by sound.
Now we unload and share our journeys with each other,
take up the bluff and the weight in the wake of each tale,
the memories on the wheel of the world – as we know
water is necessary for the presence of life,
and in each other’s stories we keep safe
this inheritance that we saved, that continues
to amaze, how friendship and yes, love extends
over the ends of the earth, in shingle, in service,
in slate and in steel, water and land, community and sky,
this living map of the world,
O Australia, O Loftus, O oceans,
O mist, O joy, O all of us alive!
Poem from a conversation with Mike, a former RN Navy welder in Marske
With these obstacles, it made it very challenging to track data across all the sessions coherently – for example participants might write a poem and at the point of reading it back together a loudspeaker would be switched on and music or bingo would take over. Others would be eating lunch first and would then join in, most, more simply became so overwhelmed by the surrounding crunch of music and chatter that they had to give up. In better situations, I would work one-to-one, ask questions, listen and scribe and allow the conversation to flow in any and all directions. Central to this delivery was the social and providing a warm, mindful and encouraging environment. My attention was very much so staggered and split between participants, such that reaching a firm conclusion of a finished poem wasn’t always possible, which on occasion made it hard for participants to feel a sense of achievement with the finished product and further made it less appealing for other potential participants. Despite these limitations, I greatly enjoyed delivering these workshops and I would do it all again. I am very proud of what Emma and I were able to achieve and it’s important to share with others that even when you face quite a dynamic environment, it’s still possible to make something very special alongside valuable outcomes both for participants on the day and afterwards for stakeholders.
Here are the headlines:
Responded after workshop “I feel good”: 10
Responded after workshop “I feel happy and creative”: 103
Number of active participants: 116
Number of participants who left before workshop was complete: 3
Positive responses: 113
(We in fact had one participant, Joe, who responded “I feel rubbish” but it is unclear whether Joe was actually joking!)
Number of people who joined workshops in progress: 25