07 Keele Management School News l Spring2015
Spring2015 l Keele Management School News 08
Mihaela Kelemen, KMS Professor in Management Studies, introduces‘ Voluntolding’, giving voice to‘ Untold Stories of Volunteering’
The experience of UK volunteers has been explored in a way never seen before, thanks to a pioneering new research technique entitled cultural animation. Led by Keele Management School Professor Mihaela Kelemen as Principal Investigator and Dr Anita Mangan, Co-Investigator, the‘ Untold Stories of Volunteering’ is part of the AHRC Connected Communities programme, a highly interdisciplinary, participatory, community-based programme of research which brings together arts, humanities and social sciences in an attempt to break down the barriers between research, policy making and the volunteering practices of community members.
The project aims to give voice to‘ untold stories of volunteering’ by ensuring that such stories are co-designed and co-produced with, and by, volunteers and other relevant stakeholders from around the UK( including Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, London, Salisbury, Leicester and Hackney). Working closely with the award winning New Vic Theatre( Newcastle-under-Lyme) and NCVO( National Council for Voluntary Organisations), the project documents and enacts volunteering experiences from multiple perspectives, using a unique methodology pioneered in the UK by Susan Moffat, Director of the New Vic Borderlines, the outreach department of New Vic Theatre.
Unique methodology: Cultural Animation
Unique findings
Mihaela’ s research has unearthed a number of volunteering practices and puts forward a useful typology of volunteering consisting of four interrelated types: altruistic, instrumental, militant and forced volunteering( or‘ voluntolding’). The typology highlights new forms of volunteering practices that have emerged in recent years such as‘ voluntolding’ which refers to people forced to volunteer either because they are on welfare benefits or because they have been given community payback sentences; features grassroots practices of volunteering that may contradict the UK government’ s ideas of volunteering; and demonstrates that volunteering practices are complex, dynamic and transcend existing dichotomies that are prevalent in the existing literature. The findings were enacted on stage through a documentary drama co-created with all participants and directed by Susan Moffat. The performance toured around the UK( in Newcastleunder-Lyme, London and Leicester) as part of the Volunteers’ Week in June 2014.
Professor Kelemen commented:“ This research is truly co-designed with the volunteers themselves. Their stories emerged in creative / experiential workshops where, with the help of cultural animation techniques, we created safe places where academic expertise, practical skills and commonsensical intelligence were valued in equal measure. Through this research we hope to open individuals up to the idea that volunteering is complex and difficult to manage top down, as well as influence policy makers by encouraging them to listen more carefully to communal stories of volunteering.”
Following on from the success of Mihaela’ s research, in partnership with Susan Moffat, Keele is establishing a new research centre, Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre. Find out more in the next issue of our magazine.
Underlying Borderlines’ ambitious powerful interventionist theatre agenda is a cultural animation approach that puts day-to-day experiences of the individuals at the heart of research and builds on the idea that when people get up and make things together, they can think in fresh ways about problematic situations and find creative ways to resolve them. Culturally animating a community involves acknowledging existing power and knowledge hierarchies and taking steps to minimise them via techniques that build up trusting relationships between participants. These techniques require participants to articulate ideas and experiences in actions and images rather than the written word, consequently dissolving power differentials that may exist within groups. In the process, participants create experiences and artefacts such as poems, songs, puppets, human tableaux, mini performances, interactive installations, and documentary dramas that are memorable and energise people around core themes and problems that require solutions. Central to this methodology is the shifting of the existing’ status quo’ and the creation of environments where traditional hierarchies and barriers are dissolved, so new dialogues are possible and different useful relationships are formed.