Public Engagement: Being In-between

Thursday 17 October, 5 – 6.30 Dance Studio

St Luke’s Campus Lizzie Swinford and Suzie West

withKerry Chappell

CREATE Research Group

The research (Chappell, Rolfe, Craft and Jobbins, 2011)

Vital partner

Public Engagement project

• Lizzie and Suzie doing facilitated action research triggered by the DPC outcomes + their own questions

• Resourced for 3.5 days each• Kerry resourced to carry out an integrated

reflective case study questioning what it means to ‘do public engagement’ in participatory research

Today

• Lizzie Swinford: ‘Let’s play dancing’Researching the adult’s role when using play in Early Years creative dance

• Suzie West: How do partnerships, approaches and relationships in collaborative projects influence the learning journeys of students at Kingsbridge Community College?

• Kerry Chappell: Public Engagement – being inbetween

• Discussion

Reflective case study

Where does the public begin and Higher Education end in the field of Education?

What does this mean for how ‘public engagement’ is carried out within ‘Education’?

Methods

• Reflective logs• Cyclical analysis• Beginning and end interviews with Lizzie and

Suzie• Artefacts from their research as data

Visual presentation

Where does the public begin and Higher Education end in the field of Education?

less a case of this…

…and more a case of this…

Being part of the same community but with different perspectives and priorities within it/ Having a shared curiosity and passion for issues within dance education

Having shared responsibility

Using and doing research in different ways

• Reflective practice driven by theory where possible?

• Theoretical development strongly informed by researching practice?

Blurred boundaries between professional, personal and creative roles

What does this mean for how ‘public engagement’ (PE) is carried out within ‘Education’ (participatory research)?

We sometimes think the path to public engagement in participatory research is like this…

When in fact it can be a bit more like this…

Hidden tensions

Previous experience showed that trying to access dance knowledge in a University from the outside was “like a climbing a cliff to get in” and could be “scary”

Even here, it was like “climbing a slope”

Participatory research cannot assume ‘easy’ public engagement

Being ‘in-betweeners’

Being open to engagement being unpredictable

Publics beyond publics

Conclusion

• There is a beginning and end between ‘University’ and ‘public’ but it’s blurry

• Active role ‘inbetween’ the research/University and the researching practitioners

• It’s not a case of ‘free-wheeling through the University gates’

• Hidden tensions in engagement as well as original DPC research

• Remaining open to the unpredictability of the PE process is vital to helping it to succeed

Living dialogic space for public engagement (Chappell & Craft, 2011)

[Original DPC methodology – flattened hierarchies, listening and actioning]

• Allows for ‘partiality’ and ownership• Fluidity and unpredictability• ‘Bottom up’, spiralling out of individual ideas • Debate and differenceCommon future?

Questions for group debate

• Is public engagement a legitimate concept for those whose research involves practice?

• Who are your publics? What publics do you think you’re a member of?

• Are there disciplinary differences in PE?• Should we be using a different term to ‘public

engagement’?