020: Story and Voice
My world rotated a few degrees over the last couple of weeks.
Some of the things that have happened to me during this time were not so great and made me sad. Other things brought me a great deal of joy and happiness. The combination of these events, good and bad, have helped me to gain just a few degrees of a fresh perspective which, in truth, I had been looking for all along.
It seems that only when you are looking for the imbalance, does the way forward become clearer.
All of this meant that when it came to Monday morning of this week, I found myself at a crossroads. I had nothing to say and I didn’t know what to do next.
Sensing the onset of burnout and fatigue following what turned out to be an 80 hour work week last week - something I used to be proud of - I decided to take the day off. Kirsty, Eddie and I went for a long walk in Brandon Country Park before having lunch in a pub and spending the afternoon at home.
The warm sunshine, gentle breeze and regenerative powers of walking through a forest (which is, by the way, my favourite place to be) worked its magic. And here I am on Tuesday morning writing this article with a fresh mind and a clear head.
Humans On The Production Line
One of the things that brought me happiness last week was my day of teaching at Anglia Ruskin University. I teach the third year students once every two weeks, and at the moment, I am also doing a three week, in-person project with the first years.
I’ve been a university lecturer before, teaching Architecture at Norwich University of the Arts. It was a very difficult time for me and I recognise now that yes, there was a big issue with students not really wanting to be there, but also I was not a very good teacher. I didn’t understand how people learnt effectively. And that the system most of us were educated in (originally designed to establish compliance in a Victorian mill) was not actually the most effective way for people to learn.
Back then, I thought of my students as ‘empty vessels’ ready to be given knowledge. I would spoon feed them information and tell them what to do - in exactly the same way I had experienced when I was in their shoes. The problem was, this mode of communication was ineffective and the whole process was largely devoid of fun for everyone involved.
Story and Voice
This time round, I am applying coaching communication principles.
Now, I am in no way a certified coach, but the principles of coaching are extremely valuable for anyone. If you want to find out more about this, Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore is a great place to start.
At its core, the principles of coaching are about asking effective questions. To not tell, teach or instruct someone what they should do, how they should do it or what they should think. But instead enable them to find their own way. The way that feels right for them. The journey that they want to take… for themselves.
As you’re probably aware by now, the idea of finding your own voice (and giving yourself permission to use it) has been a key theme of a lot of my Natives articles. It is something that really fascinates me because I often feel like I very rarely get to use my own voice. And that is where my imbalance is coming from.
—
So, my brief for the ARU first year project (called Ode To Desolation - named after my favourite short film on Vimeo) was very simple. The students were invited to:
Tell me a story that you believe needs to be told. And also, capture the unique character, personality and atmosphere of the people and places involved.
There wasn’t a requirement for the type of technology they should use (they could shoot it on a £50k RED camera or a mobile phone if they wanted to - it didn’t matter), and there was no requirement to shoot it in a certain way (they could shoot it in 35mm anamorphic if they wanted to - or they could shoot it vertically for Tik Tok - it didn’t matter).
Incidentally, when I say it didn’t matter. It did. Not because they had to film it in the format that I liked, but because they needed to choose to film it in a format that they liked.
Finding Their Voice
Most of the students hadn’t really done anything like this before. Yes, they had taken things on a mobile phone and posted them to social media. But to edit this stuff into a compelling visual story? Whilst forming their own voice about a topic that mattered to them?
That was new.
—
By the way, that second point about finding their voice was particularly scary for them. Our traditional modes of learning don’t really allow for us to have our own voice. The very act of doing so, for these students, began to unravel 20 years of needing to comply to the status quo.
—
So, imagine my joy when I asked them to play back their first edits. Edits where they had gone outside with a story to tell and captured something unique to them. Content that was oozing with character and personality, identity and what it means to be human. Stories that mattered to them, stories that they had to tell.
That was pretty special.
Just to give you an idea of where this project might be heading, here are some summaries of the stories that the students had chosen to tell:
The bond between a father and son, developed through the context of 4x4 off-road racing
The craft and process of creating and up-cycling clothing into new garments - set within a cultural narrative that has been evolving for decades.
The presence and very real impact of racial micro-aggressions in Cambridge. The student was used to seeing racial injustices on a global stage, but she wanted to draw attention to her own experiences of living in a UK city.
The escape of refugees from the east of Ukraine into Poland - told through real world footage, personal accounts and animation.
How a student overcame their depression after leaving their homeland and being isolated from everything they knew.
What it was like for a student who nearly killed herself, told as a story set entirely within a single room.
The unique story (and enduring bond) of a parent’s marriage over 37 years.
The 15 year friendship of two boys, how it was fractured and how it was eventually repaired.
Click Here To Update Your Feed
On the flip side, I went onto my Linkedin feed for the first time in a very long time the other day.
I am not a very big user of social media. At the start of the lockdown, I deleted all of my social media profiles as a result of the negative ways in which some people were using their accounts. Since then, I’ve felt I had to be on social media in some way shape or form - and I am not entirely sure why. But this time round though, I’m much more careful about who I choose to follow and that’s been really important.
I tend to think of social media as a marketplace (I mean a real world, fruit and veg marketplace, rather than an online marketplace).
And I think of all of us as market traders, with boxes and boxes of juicy pears, each of us shouting:
“Roll up, roll up, come and get your pears!”
"Tasty delicious pears, on sale right now! Come and get your pears!!”
”Buy one box of delicious pears, get a second free!”
The problem though, as I see it, is that everyone else in the marketplace is also selling their pears - shouting a variation of exactly the same sales messages I have listed above.
And what is the result of this? A never ending cacophony of people trying to sell pears to other people that are also only interested in selling their own pears.
And what’s the point of that? To sell something? To gain influence? Or to get a ton of likes?
Well, I’d argue, where is the character? The personality or the very thing that makes us all human and individual? Is it really the case that I can only gain validation if I have 80k followers?
At this stage, I’ll invite you to scroll through your social media feeds. Ask yourself, how many people are selling metaphorical pears? (Their pears may be concealed behind a facade of something else, but they’re probably still selling pears).
How many of these are going through the motions?
Or playing the ‘game’?
Is there anything we can do that’s better than this?
James
Has this article resonated with you?
Why not share it with someone else and lift their day too?
Simply click to copy the link below: