This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project). The project explored young people’s sense of place and wellbeing while growing up in Merthyr Tydfil , a post-industrial ex-mining and steel-making region of the South Wales valleys. Merthyr is a small post-industrial town of roughly 58,000 people in the South Wales Valleys (UK). Once a hub of industrial activity and innovation, along with other geographically-close regions, Merthyr has experienced a deep social rupture in recent years owing to deindustrialization and the closure of iron-works, coal mines, and manufacturing industries serving as a cultural link that had underpinned the rhythms and rituals of Valleys life (Ivinson 2014; Walkerdine and Jimenez 2012). Neighbourhoods in Merthyr are experiencing deep political abandonment, reflected in local and national governmental policies and economic regeneration/cuts (e.g. closing youth centres). Our project took place predominantly in a housing estate based on a design inspired by romantic Italian hill top villages in the 1950s. The estate expanded in the 1970s and, by the 2000s, had become dilapidated and a place with high levels of unemployment. In a context of tightening austerity, this housing estate and the people living there have been subject to stigmatising media accounts fuelled by a lucrative and thriving poverty porn industry (Tyler 2015) and, at times, by local residents themselves (Byrne et al. 2015, 2016; Thomas 2016). The ‘realities’ of poverty tend to be portrayed in popular media through no hope narratives of despair (Thomas 2016; Thomas et al. 2018)...
The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a proje... more The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a project entitled ‘Young People and Place’ in which we explored young people’s experiences of growing up in a post-industrial locale. Cwm Dyffryn is a fictional name for a former coal-mining valley town in south Wales with a proud tradition of masculine working class labour. Methodologically we focus on the process of creating the short film. This process is presented through the lens of the emergence of dynamic assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) when seven teen girls (aged 14–15 years old) and three adults, including the film-maker, set off from the girls’ secondary school with a boom, audio recorders, a professional camera and some basic running gear to make a film in a park on the edges of a major ex-mining town, just before the summer recess.
The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with ... more The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with teen girls living in an ex-industrial town in south Wales (UK), as a vantage point from which to explore what more the gesture might be telling us. Drawing on Gille Deleuze’s (1993) readings of Leibniz concept of ‘Fold’ as a differential, we speculatively explore scalar orders of time, space and matter. Using a diffractive analysis (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008) with a transdisciplinary compass we offer three speculative journeys that fold outwards from the gut-holding mannerism: folds of time and place; gender unfolds and gut reactions. By taking the gut holding mannerism as a fulcrum we imagine folds that become larger and larger expanding into space, place and the universe, or become smaller and smaller by focussing on corporeal-movement, psycho-dynamic experiences and the ‘thinking gut’ (Wilson, 2015). We question what more the gut mannerism can illuminate, what more girls can be, and what more ex-mining communities might become.
This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project)
Cultures that recognise the many forces and memories held in landscape can make important contrib... more Cultures that recognise the many forces and memories held in landscape can make important contributions to climate emergency. We argue there is another group which has knowledge to call upon; young people growing up in post-industrial places. In this paper, we draw on over 10 years of research with young people to speculate about the potential of outsider knowledge as the basis for emplaced activism as an original and significantly new approach to environmental education. The first part of the paper presents the argument, concepts and methodology for thinking about environments as lived experience. Next we introduce the place where capitalist and industrial forces are knotted with the distinctive histories of post-industrial communities. Place is explored through stories of the geological and historical legacies of south Wale’s valleys in sections titled: Earth Matters; Industrial Matters; Affective Matters and Matters of Decline. Next, three lines of flight that took off in creativ...
PurposeThis paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual a... more PurposeThis paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.Design/methodology/approachPosthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.FindingsThe paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomat...
This chapter attempts to connect the processes of education, inequality and poverty with children... more This chapter attempts to connect the processes of education, inequality and poverty with children and young people’s experiences of living in areas of economic disadvantage. It explores young people’s everyday lived experiences of poverty with a focus on education. Schools alone cannot ameliorate the effects of poverty. Yet, worryingly, numerous reports of young people’s experiences suggest that schools often amplify the effects of poverty. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand the subjective experiences of young people to appreciate how the structures of educational institutions further marginalise the more vulnerable. A series of case illustrations describe the lived experiences of schooling for some young people. The final section looks at what needs to be done and highlights the damage of refusing to take more explicit action to prevent education systems making matters worse.
This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project). The project explored young people’s sense of place and wellbeing while growing up in Merthyr Tydfil , a post-industrial ex-mining and steel-making region of the South Wales valleys. Merthyr is a small post-industrial town of roughly 58,000 people in the South Wales Valleys (UK). Once a hub of industrial activity and innovation, along with other geographically-close regions, Merthyr has experienced a deep social rupture in recent years owing to deindustrialization and the closure of iron-works, coal mines, and manufacturing industries serving as a cultural link that had underpinned the rhythms and rituals of Valleys life (Ivinson 2014; Walkerdine and Jimenez 2012). Neighbourhoods in Merthyr are experiencing deep political abandonment, reflected in local and national governmental policies and economic regeneration/cuts (e.g. closing yout...
The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a proje... more The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a project entitled ‘Young People and Place’ in which we explored young people’s experiences of growing up in a post-industrial locale. Cwm Dyffryn is a fictional name for a former coal-mining valley town in south Wales with a proud tradition of masculine working class labour. Methodologically we focus on the process of creating the short film. This process is presented through the lens of the emergence of dynamic assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) when seven teen girls (aged 14–15 years old) and three adults, including the film-maker, set off from the girls’ secondary school with a boom, audio recorders, a professional camera and some basic running gear to make a film in a park on the edges of a major ex-mining town, just before the summer recess.
This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project). The project explored young people’s sense of place and wellbeing while growing up in Merthyr Tydfil , a post-industrial ex-mining and steel-making region of the South Wales valleys. Merthyr is a small post-industrial town of roughly 58,000 people in the South Wales Valleys (UK). Once a hub of industrial activity and innovation, along with other geographically-close regions, Merthyr has experienced a deep social rupture in recent years owing to deindustrialization and the closure of iron-works, coal mines, and manufacturing industries serving as a cultural link that had underpinned the rhythms and rituals of Valleys life (Ivinson 2014; Walkerdine and Jimenez 2012). Neighbourhoods in Merthyr are experiencing deep political abandonment, reflected in local and national governmental policies and economic regeneration/cuts (e.g. closing youth centres). Our project took place predominantly in a housing estate based on a design inspired by romantic Italian hill top villages in the 1950s. The estate expanded in the 1970s and, by the 2000s, had become dilapidated and a place with high levels of unemployment. In a context of tightening austerity, this housing estate and the people living there have been subject to stigmatising media accounts fuelled by a lucrative and thriving poverty porn industry (Tyler 2015) and, at times, by local residents themselves (Byrne et al. 2015, 2016; Thomas 2016). The ‘realities’ of poverty tend to be portrayed in popular media through no hope narratives of despair (Thomas 2016; Thomas et al. 2018)...
The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a proje... more The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a project entitled ‘Young People and Place’ in which we explored young people’s experiences of growing up in a post-industrial locale. Cwm Dyffryn is a fictional name for a former coal-mining valley town in south Wales with a proud tradition of masculine working class labour. Methodologically we focus on the process of creating the short film. This process is presented through the lens of the emergence of dynamic assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) when seven teen girls (aged 14–15 years old) and three adults, including the film-maker, set off from the girls’ secondary school with a boom, audio recorders, a professional camera and some basic running gear to make a film in a park on the edges of a major ex-mining town, just before the summer recess.
The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with ... more The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with teen girls living in an ex-industrial town in south Wales (UK), as a vantage point from which to explore what more the gesture might be telling us. Drawing on Gille Deleuze’s (1993) readings of Leibniz concept of ‘Fold’ as a differential, we speculatively explore scalar orders of time, space and matter. Using a diffractive analysis (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008) with a transdisciplinary compass we offer three speculative journeys that fold outwards from the gut-holding mannerism: folds of time and place; gender unfolds and gut reactions. By taking the gut holding mannerism as a fulcrum we imagine folds that become larger and larger expanding into space, place and the universe, or become smaller and smaller by focussing on corporeal-movement, psycho-dynamic experiences and the ‘thinking gut’ (Wilson, 2015). We question what more the gut mannerism can illuminate, what more girls can be, and what more ex-mining communities might become.
This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project)
Cultures that recognise the many forces and memories held in landscape can make important contrib... more Cultures that recognise the many forces and memories held in landscape can make important contributions to climate emergency. We argue there is another group which has knowledge to call upon; young people growing up in post-industrial places. In this paper, we draw on over 10 years of research with young people to speculate about the potential of outsider knowledge as the basis for emplaced activism as an original and significantly new approach to environmental education. The first part of the paper presents the argument, concepts and methodology for thinking about environments as lived experience. Next we introduce the place where capitalist and industrial forces are knotted with the distinctive histories of post-industrial communities. Place is explored through stories of the geological and historical legacies of south Wale’s valleys in sections titled: Earth Matters; Industrial Matters; Affective Matters and Matters of Decline. Next, three lines of flight that took off in creativ...
PurposeThis paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual a... more PurposeThis paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.Design/methodology/approachPosthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.FindingsThe paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomat...
This chapter attempts to connect the processes of education, inequality and poverty with children... more This chapter attempts to connect the processes of education, inequality and poverty with children and young people’s experiences of living in areas of economic disadvantage. It explores young people’s everyday lived experiences of poverty with a focus on education. Schools alone cannot ameliorate the effects of poverty. Yet, worryingly, numerous reports of young people’s experiences suggest that schools often amplify the effects of poverty. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand the subjective experiences of young people to appreciate how the structures of educational institutions further marginalise the more vulnerable. A series of case illustrations describe the lived experiences of schooling for some young people. The final section looks at what needs to be done and highlights the damage of refusing to take more explicit action to prevent education systems making matters worse.
This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilisi... more This chapter tells the story of a research-engagement project called Making, Mapping and Mobilising in Merthyr (otherwise known as The 4M’s Project). The project explored young people’s sense of place and wellbeing while growing up in Merthyr Tydfil , a post-industrial ex-mining and steel-making region of the South Wales valleys. Merthyr is a small post-industrial town of roughly 58,000 people in the South Wales Valleys (UK). Once a hub of industrial activity and innovation, along with other geographically-close regions, Merthyr has experienced a deep social rupture in recent years owing to deindustrialization and the closure of iron-works, coal mines, and manufacturing industries serving as a cultural link that had underpinned the rhythms and rituals of Valleys life (Ivinson 2014; Walkerdine and Jimenez 2012). Neighbourhoods in Merthyr are experiencing deep political abandonment, reflected in local and national governmental policies and economic regeneration/cuts (e.g. closing yout...
The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a proje... more The short film ‘Still Running’, which is the focus of this chapter, came about as part of a project entitled ‘Young People and Place’ in which we explored young people’s experiences of growing up in a post-industrial locale. Cwm Dyffryn is a fictional name for a former coal-mining valley town in south Wales with a proud tradition of masculine working class labour. Methodologically we focus on the process of creating the short film. This process is presented through the lens of the emergence of dynamic assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) when seven teen girls (aged 14–15 years old) and three adults, including the film-maker, set off from the girls’ secondary school with a boom, audio recorders, a professional camera and some basic running gear to make a film in a park on the edges of a major ex-mining town, just before the summer recess.
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