So finally got to have a very brief chat with Gabby Edlin – alum of this course and all round general fab lady and founder of Bloody Good Period. She was so helpful in cutting straight to the crux of things and trimming away some of the unnecessary to help things seem a little clearer. I think she was good for all of us actually with great insight and fresh perspective. I’ve been ruminating on the idea of power and not speaking and trying to think of new approaches that don’t involve workshops or even the creation of resources. When thinking of the Golden Bough I have come to realise that what was my initial strength at the start of this process is perhaps…well not holding me back exactly, but tying me down, to a certain way of thinking or envisioning things that I need to try and move away from now. Workshops are a natural and comfortable way for me to approach things and at first my entry way into including an arts based vision for the project. But I know a reliance on this way of thinking now is perhaps stagnating my thought process. What has also been evident is the previous reliance I had on my networks to draw on, this way I knew workshops had an existing audience, especially of people who knew me and my work and so trusted what I was doing. Moving to a new city blew a lot of that out of the water and I have felt a little at a loss because of it. Not only because it makes me panic about rebuilding them but as aslo a safety net has now essentially vanished.
I think all in all this a good thing, to have these challenges is a good thing as I’m defo finding it hard to think about things in a new way and not rely on old method that I know well. They served me greatly in the first half of this course but now I need to hone new skills. I think I can review what I am doing in terms of stakeholders a bit and perhaps let go of the parents for now. It’s tricky as I do see a major space of want and need on behalf of parents for guidance on this stuff but it’s also evident that some of that is available if people only too 5 minutes to google and do the work themselves but that people either don’t have either the inclination or the time or both. You have to hand this stuff to people on a plate and even then they may not eat it. Lead a horse to water and all that. I do think though that it’s important not to underestimate the power and influence of parents who are engaged with this stuff and how vital it is to try and engage more parents across the board. The education system can barely cope with the actual curriculum let alone all the gaps that need filling and critical thinking that comes with. Parents have to step up at home – teachers and schools certainly can’t do everything and nor should they have to.
But the question I am forming an my responses to it needs to evolve and if I am going to investigate further these ideas around porn I need to just try and find out more from anyone and chat to everyone. Whilst I am pretty happy with the outcome of my abstracting porn art process I’m not sure I’ll push to do it as a workshop just yet – unless an easy venue comes my way – and I’ll just keep the idea in my back pocket for now. I am trying to think about interventions that require a lot less talking on my part and allow for silence in someway since thinking about the flex of power that is saying nothing has floated so consistently in my head for a while. Gabby gave me good advice about not worrying about the art so much – I’m an artist, it will come – and just trying to interact with anyone on the subject in not too intense a way. Game-ify – not something she said exactly but something that comes up in class a lot anyway. With this in mind I’ve been thinking a lot recently also about how to break things down and this idea of just using initial opener concepts and terms – those first stepping stones to understanding – like the Rape Culture diagram previously showed us, just trying to simplify things a little and untangle it from al the previous talking. In the same vein perhaps there is a way to use some fundamental facts or stats, perhaps about porn, an equal number of positive and negative if possible. The public health scientist Emily Rothman said of her porn literacy programme that giving the kids/young people scientific facts was the most effective approach because it let them decide for themselves with all the truth in front of them, they work out the nuances whilst not feeling preached at, judged or ignored. I definitely think my use of facts in the advert for the parent workshops was really effective so I may play around with this idea as a starting point. Hopefully something new will come from it.