The multi-sensory experiences of mobile research encounters

1. The multi-sensory experiences of mobile research encounters Nicola Ross, Sally Holland, Emma Renold and Alex Hillman Qualiti, Cardiff University

2. Content • Multi-sensory mobile research encounters • Overview of the (Extra)ordinary Lives project • Young people in care and cultures of communication • Mobile methods • Car journey interactions • ‘Guided’ walks • The multi-sensory in mobile methods: some considerations

3. Multi-sensory mobile research encounters • Mobilities paradigm in social sciences (Sheller and Urry 2006; Binnie et al 2007) • Multi-sensory research … • as interaction of senses, dynamic • embodied experiential encounters, performative(see Teather, 1999; Harrison, 2000) • may be mobile: immediacy and now-ness of walking, driving, passengering(see de Certeau, 1984; Thrift 2004) • place-making practices and placed encounters: a ‘constitutive coingredience’ (Casey, 2001, p684)of people and places

4. (Extra)ordinary lives: project overview • Longitudinal, participatory research with 8 young people in care • Using visual and mobile methods • Young people develop own multi-media accounts and representations • Researchers conducting an ethnography of this process

5. Multi-media project sessions and out-of-session contacts Note: Some images removed from web-version • Working collaboratively with new technologies during project sessions • Between session contacts: guided journeys, conversations in a range of settings.

6. Summary:Central aims Central substantive aim • To take a collaborative ethnographic approach to explore the ordinary everyday relationship cultures, identities, social relations/networks (over time, in different spaces and contexts) of young people in care Central methodological aim • To explore the ethical and analytic issues that are potentially raised and challenged by enabling young people to choose and define their own modes of representation and authorship (see Holland et.al. (2008) for further details)

7. Young people in care: social location • Self-directed, multi-media data generation encouraged by participants’ social location: • Assessed , reviewed, monitored (individual) • Measured for performance indicators (group) • May be in ‘special units’ in schools or risk exclusion • May not wish to share difficult experiences

8. Young people’s cultures of communication • Often: on the move, in short bursts, fast-moving and changeable conversations, punctuated by technologies • Engagement with research varied across the group and over time • Evolving styles of data generation affected our insights into the participants’ everyday lives

9. Mobile methods • Shared, experiential journeys generating meaningful understandings of everyday lives • Placed and place-making interactions, rooted in young people’s everyday locales • Exchanges full of interruptions and disruptions: the intimate is interspersed with the mundane • Movement and interactivity allow participants and researchers to experience closeness and distance • Multi-sensory research encounters as experienced and as recorded (note: data/data-record distinction, see Emmison and Smith, 2000; Dicks et al 2006)

10. ‘Guided’ walks • Shared, experiential journeys in locales of significance to young people • Conveyed young people’s strong sense of place and locally based relations • Research encounters ‘rooted’ in the everyday, yet opening avenues for memories and imagined futures • Multi-sensory research encounters: being there and experiencing (ambience, sights, sounds, smells…) • Motion, talk, recording and the meshing of these

11. ‘Guided’ walk: belonging and caring Short video edit of ‘guided’ walk with one young person, Ruth (aged 11) out with Nicola (researcher) in her locality, conveying some of the multi-sensory experiences of the walk through the visual and audio. This piece opens out the term ‘placement,’ common in social work discourse, to convey Ruth’s strong sense of belonging, her rootedness to place and the centrality of locally based social relations and animals in her life. The shared journey generates insights into Ruth’s views on belonging and caring revealing the affordances of the ‘guided’ walks in creating time and space for the generation of meaningful research interactions.

12. ‘Guided’ walk: disrupting research interactions Audio extract from a ‘guided’ walk with one young person, Kate (aged 15) out in her locality with Nicola (researcher) that focuses attention on the soundscapes of the journey. This section draws attention to disruptions to the ‘guided’ walks and particularly the sharing of narratives, as the researcher’s perceptions of immediate risks impact on the research interactions.

13. Car journey interactions • Regular routine journeys • Audio recordings of in-car interactions capture journey soundscapes (talk, singing, radio, car-sounds, streetsounds) • More enabling and less intimidating than ‘formal’ face-to-face interview settings: young people controlling recording • The mobile experience informs and disrupts interactions

14. Audio extract from car journey interaction taking place as Keely (aged 13) and Emma (researcher) make one of their regular journeys to a fieldwork session. The audio recording captures some of the soundscapes of the journey and highlights Keely’s use of the radio as a means to bring to an end some intimate talk Car journey interaction: audio extract

15. Audio extract from car journey interaction taking place as Angel (aged 10) and Sally (researcher) travel together on one of their regular journeys home from a fieldwork session. The audio recording relays the interspersion of intimate talk shared by Angel about the places passed and associations with events that took place there involving her family, with the mundane talk of driving and passengering. Car journey interaction: audio extract

16. The multi-sensory in mobile methods: some considerations • The affordances of and relations between: • different media in ‘capturing’ multi-sensory research encounters (video and audio) • Mobile methods in generating multi-sensory data (‘guided’ walks and car journey interactions) • Research-in-context: young people’s cultures of communication and ‘placed’ research interactions • Further representing the multi-sensory … (link to film) Place in Me

17. References Binnie, J., Edensor, T., Holloway, J. Millington, S. and Young, C. (2007) Mundane mobilities, banal travels, Social & Cultural Geography, 8, 2, 165-174 Casey, E. S (2001) Between geography and philosophy: what does it mean to be in the place-world?, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91, 4, 683-693 de Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press Dicks, B., Soyinka, B. & Coffey, A. (2006) Multimodal ethnography, Qualitative Research 6, 1, 77-96 Emmison, M. & Smith, P. (2000) Researching the Visual: Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural Enquiry, London, Sage Harrison, P. (2000) Making sense: embodiment and the sensibilities of the everyday, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 497-517 Holland, S., Renold, E., Ross, N.J., Hillman, A. (2008) Rights, ‘right on’ or the right thing to do? A critical exploration of young people's engagement in participative social work research, Qualiti Working Paper 006 http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/qualiti/WorkingPapers/Qualiti_WPS_006.pdf Sheller, M. & Urry, J. (2006) The new mobilities paradigm, Environment and Planning A, 38, 207-226 Teather, E.K. (1999) Embodied Geographies, London, Routledge Thrift, N. (2004) Driving in the City, Theory, Culture & Society, 21, 41–59

18. Further Information For more information about the (Extra)ordinary Lives research project contact Qualiti, Cardiff School of Social Sciences www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/qualiti qualiti@cardiff.ac.uk