The Twisting House – sharing and reflecting – Authentic PPIE

I have been telling stories for a long time. I’ve told stories to other people’s children (at Summer Club and North End Playscheme), to my children (at home, at school, on the bus*) and latterly in my career, to adults**. I love reading, listening, watching and sharing stories. They are an intrinsic part of our humanity and play a key role in how we make sense of our experiences.

When I do storytelling in person, there’s the opportunity for questions, reactions and feedback, which can be really engaging for everyone involved. The first time I told a story for adults was at the C2UExpo in Newfoundland in 2011. I was nervous because my storytelling style is performative – I embody the characters as I tell the story, moving around the space and using my voice and movement to convey what’s happening. I wasn’t sure how a room full of academics would respond to this kind of presentation – especially when everything else had been PowerPoint slides – but to my pleasant surprise, after a moment of two of ‘what on earth are we looking at?‘ kinds of expressions on people’s faces, they relaxed and engaged with the story.

The story was called The Castle of Mystery. It featured all sorts of lightly comical caricatures, to illustrate some of the common challenges faced by community partners when trying to engage with a university. The audience took it very well and because it was a story and not a direct attack or challenge to them or their institutions, it created a space for reflection and discussion. It was also the first time someone spoke to me about something they’d noticed in one of my stories, which I had not.

This experience of someone reflecting something I hadn’t seen or intended in the narrative was eye-opening for me and provided a really valuable lesson:

there’s always more than one way to understand a story.

It was with this in mind that I took part in the recent Social Pedagogy Reading Club, to discuss my story The Twisting House. (If you follow the link, you can find out about how I came to write it, and the thinking behind it, as well as the story itself.) I was absolutely delighted to be asked and really looking forward to hearing people’s thoughts and perspectives. I’d had some feedback via LinkedIn in the run up to event, and on the night I was not disappointed!

The session was hosted by Gabriel Eichstellar from ThemPra and Katrin Bain from London Metropolitan University. There were people from all sorts of backgrounds: social workers, academics, consultants, coaches and a PhD student, all of whom have an interest in Social Pedagogy. We started with a few questions for me about the story and why I’d written it, and Gabriel asked people to share in the chat, something which had really stuck with them from the story:

How the map became the focus preventing initially dialogue
I loved the way that if you take the map too seriously then reality shifts to match. This is about so much more than public services!
The end, his bravery to go back inside, the trust he had to find the way out again. I had to take some deep breaths before life could go on.
That whole story had a huge impact on me when I first heard it
Complexity, the house may have even more doors, windows and trapped doors under carpets, we maybe need more help from colleagues
I want to do an event for Social Work Day at my uni with students, Pwle, practitioners on What is good social work? And start by reading the story and then go into discussion.

(you can see why I like these people – all these big questions!)

We broke into small groups for discussion and then came together at the end to share our thoughts. One of the things which really struck me was how deeply people seemed to have been affected by the story; it seemed to act like a mirror, reflecting things back to them in a way they hadn’t seen before. Guests in the session were very conscious of how the map defined the interactions Luke had with people in the house – the map appeared to provide certainty, but also created constraints. One person mentioned it had moved them to tears.

The small groups were provided with prompts for discussion. In one group, someone decided to start at the bottom of the list and work backwards, which prompted this reaction: “Esther finding herself coming at the questions in reverse (starting with 3) felt spectacularly liberating – kinda like being released from having to follow the map, and able to play with doors!!!” I also had a fascinating conversation in my small group about how The Lost might become The Disappeared and whether Kelly was Lost or on her way to becoming Disappeared? We talked about the differences between the two and I suggested that it might be to do with an individual’s resilience but also the availability of a support network, to enable them to keep going until they found a way out.

Someone suggested that perhaps one of the biggest things was just being aware of the map in the first place. We talked about statutory and legal requirements which often seem to render practitioners feeling trapped or unable to innovate for fear of breaking the rules or the law. However, someone challenged that and said that often assumptions are made about these kinds of standards – a closer look may reveal that they are not as inflexible as we believe.

Another discussion point was about training provided for practitioners in public services. Someone suggested that the ‘map’ was intrinsic in training programmes, with a lot of built-in assumptions which then became ‘baked in’ to public services and made change very difficult to enact.

Other observations included:

“The house feels lonely – there’s no interaction between people” I had never considered this, but I thought it was a fantastic insight. The only people who interact in the house are people like Luke.
“Do the staff support each other?” To a degree, yes, but as we notice in the story, the staff don’t cross paths very often and they don’t appear to question how well the map is working
“People with multiple long-term conditions may leave the house and then have to come back to it because of health/care needs.” I thought this was a great observation, and not something I’d thought of myself.
“Do people want the territory/map to conform to their needs? When someone gets stuck (they’re at risk of moving from The Lost to The Disappeared) do they expect the system to accommodate them instead of recognising that they also need to change?” I thought this was a really interesting and challenging insight. Sometimes even when we offer help, it might not be accepted and practitioners might be blamed for things they cannot control.
“The Disappeared – they might stay there because the house becomes familiar. They can’t imagine leaving.” This highlights the experience of some practitioners who feel they have done all they can, but also recognise that for things to change, people need to be brave and want that to happen.
“The construction of the map – it reflects all the statutory and legal requirements, but what if it’s gotten blurred or soggy over time and this affects the help Luke is able to offer?” This was a really interesting reflection and links back to the comment about training and how certain beliefs or approaches become ‘baked in’.

I know that there was more that we covered in the discussion which isn’t in my notes, because I wanted to be ‘present’ for the conversation, but even these notes show how much rich variety and reflection there was during the evening, which I really appreciated 😀

One question was asked: “What could Sharon do with this next?” I answered: “Great question! I’ve got no idea!” (I knew I wanted to write a reflective piece on the Reading Club session, and here it is!) Beyond that, I’m not sure, but I’m still really interested in exploring a PhD or ProfDoc in this area and seeing how I could apply creative methods (such as storytelling) and Social Pedagogy to public services, with a particular focus on community engagement. I seem to be coming up blank at the moment – funded PhDs or ProfDocs don’t seem to exist in this space, but I’ll keep trying!

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Gabriel kindly provided some questions to support the group discussion. You can use them yourself to reflect on the story:

On the house itself
The house looks ordinary from the outside but is labyrinthine within. What does this say about how we perceive the situations of the people we work with? When have you found that what looked straightforward turned out to be something much more complex once you were “inside” it with someone?
The Lost become The Disappeared: absorbed by the house, losing their sense of self. What does this image evoke for you in your own field? What conditions allow that kind of erosion to happen, and what might interrupt it?
On Luke and his map
Luke trusts his map – his training, his frameworks, his professional tools – and the map does work, some of the time. What are the “maps” in your own practice? When are they genuinely useful, and when might they be obscuring something?
It’s Kelly who sees the hidden door, not Luke. What made it possible for him to finally see it too? What does that moment suggest about the relationship between practitioner knowledge and the knowledge of the person being supported?
Luke realises he has never asked anyone which door they wanted; he has always given directions. How do you reflect on your own practice around choice, voice, and self-determination? Is there a “Kelly moment” from your own experience you’d be willing to share?
On the relationship
Kelly says: “Thank you for trusting me, and believing me. We might never have got out if you hadn’t been willing to do that.” What did trust and belief actually look like in this story? How does that resonate with your understanding of relationship in social pedagogy?

* Bus journeys can be boring for small people, so I’d tell them stories while we were travelling. I could tell when the people around us were listening, because it got quiet! On two occasions the bus driver said they wouldn’t let us off until I told them what happened next!

**Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI) Conference, Barcelona 2012; C2UExpo (College, Community & University Expo in Canada: Newfoundland 2011 and Ottawa 2013