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Flirting with Space

Susan Bermingham & John Lyons 1

‘Flirting with Space’

Sue Bermingham & John Lyons

Manchester Metropolitan University & The Geographical Association

Abstract What is space? The authors, two Geographers are intrigued and fascinated by the concept of ‘Space’. The paper provides an opportunity to spatially reflect on a collaborative project in which we shared liminal space (Simpson, Sturges et al. 2009) in our emerging roles as community geographers, flirting with professional/ personal boundaries as we experienced and collaboratively worked across a diverse range of semiotic spaces (Gaines 2006). The professional journey caused us to question and expose our ingrained prior understandings of the concept space, and left us re energised with a deeper appreciation and understanding of space.

The paper is organized as follows. After discussing the geographical significance of the concept space, including liminal and semiotic space, we provide background to the collaborative project ‘Making my place in the World’ we were engaged with during 2011-12. We then present our findings organized around the collaboration project as an experience of transience, flirtation and change, the role of the project in creating the identity of community geographer and the significance of the range of semiotic spaces experienced during the project. We highlight our deepening geographical understanding of the concept space. We conclude by highlighting, the transient, unsettling and creative aspects of the shared liminal space that led to a deeper understanding of space.

Flirting with Space


Introduction

Geography perhaps uniquely in the UK school curriculum is the discipline where

students might address the concepts of place, space and ideas of social justice and

governance at a local level. The authors, two geography educators worked with

students on a UK funded project (2011-12) to develop better understanding of the

space and place the young people inhabit and how they might become agents of

change within their own ‘local’ place, we felt we were well aware of the distinctive

contribution that the discipline of geography brings in terms of an understanding of

place and space. However it quickly became clear to us that these concepts,

concepts we imagined were mutually understood, were neither easy to define nor,

when we tried to come to agreement, had similar shared meanings for us. This set

us on a journey to explore what we both understood by the term ‘space’ and the

impact space and time has had on our collaboration. We have limited our work to

exploring the impact on our collaboration but we are well aware that time and space

also affects interactions with the students we have worked with.

Our writing approach has been influenced by May’s playful article Flirting with

Boundaries(May 2003), in which time and space are woven together, providing the

reader with a rich textual feeling for the places, spaces and relationship boundaries

in which his research took place. The format of our paper attempts to exemplify

flirtation (as energised, teasing, affective provocations) within our collaborative

spatial project as we interject this paper with segments of fieldnotes (individual and

collaboratively composed). These field extracts we feel create a pacy, engaging

narrative of the project and are sign posted with a reference to the 24 hour clock.

Our collaboration occurred during 2011-12, working within two Northern UK Cities

(Sheffield and Manchester) and across the 35 miles that separates these two large

conurbations, we embraced ‘an ontology of encounter or togetherness based on the

principles of connection, extension and continuous novelty’(Amin and Thrift 2002) p:

27.

Geographical significance of Space

Flirting with Space


The two authors actively engage on a daily basis as professional practitioners at the

intersection of two disciplines, Geography and Education. Our 65+ years within the

field of geography education provide us with a particular interdisciplinary perspective

and expertise drawn from the network of connections, knowledge and interests from

each discipline.

16.20 Both our experiences of geography over the last 35 years or so must have an impact on our approach to the subject. I went to university in the early 70’s and first encountered the quantitative revolution, where everything was measured. I didn’t like it much to be honest, but it certainly impacted on my geography. The late 70’s was where I first encountered the geographers interest in social justice and inequality and then the significance of place in the 80’s. Some teachers have only known the cultural turn of the 90’s. How they see the subject can be quite different from mine and they may see ‘space’ in a very different way. (John)

Chris Taylor (2009) reviewed the interplay between Geography and Education,

welcoming a trans disciplinary approach, bridging geography and education, yet

offered some caution

.. much use of geography in education research does not go beyond utilising

the language and vocabulary of geography. As Robertson also argues, ‘it is not

sufficient to simply bring a spatial lexicon to our conceptual sentences (as in

‘geographies’ of classroom emotions; the school as a ‘place’; communities of

practice). This is to fetishize space’ (2009, p. 2).(Taylor 2009)p: 652

As geography education practitioners with expertise of two disciplines we needed to

return to our geographical roots to clarify and ensure we were not guilty of fetishizing

space. Working in the field of Geography Education for a similar number of years

(30+ years) we assumed a shared understanding of core geographical concepts,

including the key concepts for this conference titled ‘Space, Place and Social

Justice. So what is ‘Space’?

‘Space’ is often regarded as the fundamental stuff of geography. Indeed, so

fundamental that the well-known anthropologist Edward Hall once compared it

to sex: ‘It is there but we don’t talk about it. And if we do, we certainly are not

expected to get technical or serious about it’ (cited in Barcan and Buchanan,

1999:7). Indeed, it would be fairly easy to argue that most of the time most

geographers do tend to get rather embarrassed when challenged to come out

Flirting with Space


with ideas about what the supposed core of their subject is, and yet they

continue to assert its importance.’ (Thrift 2003) page 85

The embarrassment Thrift notes is one we initially avoided by taking as a given, a

shared understanding of the discipline Geography, and the core concepts of space

and place, keystones within the project. This became the genesis of our flirtation with

space, as we circled around, assumed, teased without pinning down and clarifying

our intentions, our understandings of space. Space became the unspoken backdrop

of our collaboration.

15.23 We came to the project as two professionals whose paths had crossed on many occasions. John had been an evaluator for a geography knowledge booster course I had organised at MMU, and had been invited as an ‘expert’ to lecture and motivate my trainee teachers. John came with an aura of the GA, a reputation and status of one promoting quality geography. At the start of the project I was excited, flattered to be invited, yet in awe of the challenge working with an expert in the field, and feared I might be shown publically to be wanting. Developing a new role, whilst in awe of the ‘other’ co worker and project leader took me outside my familiar professional worlds, creating an unsettling yet transformative platform to grow in new directions within a collaborative, formative environment. (Sue)

The reluctance of our two geographers to define such a key concept at the start of

the project is interesting and worth considering in more detail. At a research

conference in June 2011 one of the authors was asked by a member of the audience

What is your definition of space? What came to mind at the time was a visual picture

of a typical glossary page found in the back of UK textbooks in which key terms are

defined in less than 20 words, with an educators desire to inform and help others a

brief response was provided in response to the question and an acknowledgment

that further research and clarity would be work upon. Whilst writing this paper we

scanned a selection of UK textbooks and were surprised that ‘space’ wasn’t included

within their glossaries, an interesting direction to investigate further another time.

Geographers share a common approach to space ‘they abandon the idea of any pre-

existing space in which things are passively embedded’, contemporary geographers

reject an absolute view of space ‘for an idea of space as undergoing continual

construction as a result of the agency of things encountering each other’ a relational

view of space. (Thrift 2003: 86). Our engagement in this project led to us

‘abandoning’ pre existing and unspoken definitions of space, as we developed our

collaborative understanding and position within the project schools and as we

prepared for conferences.

Flirting with Space


Nigel Thrift writing in 2003, offered insights into the geographical conceptualization of

space, sharing four different kinds of space of interest to human geographers:

empirical, flow, image and place. Empirical space refers to space that can be

described in detail via measurements using units that have over time achieved

common acceptance for example the metric system. Thrift notes the emergence of

technologies such as GPS that can track movements through space and time. Flows

of people, goods and ideas through space leave traces and providing connections,

networks provide the second category Flow Space. Image as an element of space

reminds us of our constant exposure to a variety of information in our daily lives, how

we select, notice some aspects from the ‘snowstorm’ of images that surround us.

Finally with Place as the fourth kind of space Thrift links to embodiment and the

affect of our encounters in spaces, how some spaces energise whereas others

subdue us. These four different conceptualizations of space provide evidence of the

challenge for geography educators defining space to students, teachers and

academics.

Doreen Massey has been part of our shared back-story, a geographical presence

during our 65+ professional years as geography educators. ‘Doreen Massey, one of

the most well-known British geographers’ (Taylor 2009:652).

To the geographical spatial debate and our deepening understanding of space as

geographers, Massey’s offers three intertwined propositions:

Space is the product of interrelations,

Space is the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity, and

Space is always under construction.(Massey 2005).

We also draw upon the rich legacy of Henri Lefebvre, cited by (Soja 1996) as ‘more

influential than any other scholar in opening up and exploring the limitless

dimensions of our social spatiality’. Lefebvre provides scholars including

geographers (Edensor 2010) with ‘rhythmanalysis’, a method for considering space

and time together.

Flirting with Space


Rhythmanalysis acknowledges the dynamic temporality of the world and the

processual character of place.’ (Edensor 2010:18)

We problematise Thrift’s four kinds of space and Massey’s three propositions, as we

probe the rhythms that contribute and characterize the spatio-temporal nature of the

range of spaces experienced during a collaborative project from the familiar places

from our everyday experiences of homes, journeys to and places of work, to the

unfamiliar places experienced, schools, homes, journeys to ‘others’ places of work.

We question how is the space of collaboration constituted, and maintained? What is

silenced in that space?

Liminial space & Semiotic space Geographers such as Moran(Moran 2011) are interested in transient spaces such as

prison visiting rooms, spaces that facilitate the coming together of people in

temporary liminal, in between spaces.

Liminality …. refers to occupancy of ‘in between’ spaces (Garsten, 1999;

Turner, 1977) where individuals are neither wholly part of nor wholly divorced

from the organization. The concept has been used to highlight the unsettling

nature of these spaces and the ambiguities that can accrue. (Simpson, Sturges

et al. 2009)p: 54

We explore our collaborative relationship as we negotiated our temporary (2011-12)

project roles, sharing liminal space including school waiting rooms and hallways as

well as within a range of spaces from domestic to council chambers during the

project. Semiotic space we adopt as the ‘symbolic representation created to maintain

an established social distribution of power’. (Gaines 2006:176)

Flirtation within research

Flirting—to behave amorously without serious intent, (May 2003: 443)

to show superficial or casual interest or liking” (Merriam-Webster 2007) a

definition that suggests flirtation is not always a blatant sexual advance but can

be playful and affiliative. (Kray and Locke 2008)page 484

Flirting with Space


May (2003) explores a range of flirtatious behaviors within his research from

flirtatious pleasantries, offered as part of his personality type as a ‘natural flirt’, to

playful flirtation within the safety web of visible marital status, through to the

boundary of sexual harassment. May’s research focuses on the relationship

boundary between professor and student, our focus lies with two researchers

(Female & Male) collaborating on a funded project.

Sexuality is a backdrop that frames virtually all adult cross-sex friendships…….

Some of the things people do to flirt are also the things people do as basic

conversational behaviors (e.g., asking people questions, smiling, etc). (Egland,

Spitzberg et al. 1996)page 114

We consider the changing nature of the collaborative relationship over the duration

of the project, problematising the role of flirtation within research practice. Coffey

noted that ‘sustained periods of fieldwork is a shared (and more often than not an

emotional) experience. Fieldwork spawns data, texts and personal relationships….

Time, space and emotions are all invested in ethnographic fieldwork….’.(Coffey

1999)P:57. We would agree with Coffey’s comments for this collaborative project.

Methodology

Hubbard in Key Thinkers on Space and Place (2006) reminds us

‘… a biographical approach reveals how individual thinkers draw on a rich

legacy of ideas drawn from past generations (as well as the influence of their

contemporaries). …. No theorist develops their view of the world in an

intellectual vacuum.’ (Hubbard, Kitchin et al. 2006)p: 11-12.

Our concern for this paper focuses on our collaborative social spatiality as we

employ a reflexive approach to our qualitative data that includes; email

correspondence, learning journals, mobile phone texts, field notes and face-to-face

discussions.

Background to the project

Flirting with Space


The Paul Hamlyn project, Making My Place in the World, was conceived and

designed by the Geographical Association during 2011, designated as the national

year of communication, known as the Hello campaign. The Communication Trust

ran Hello in partnership with Jean Gross, the UK government’s Communication

Champion for children. The Making My Place in the World explores ways to

encourage young people to play a part in helping shape their community as active

citizens, participating in real world conversations about the places in which they live,

and through these conversations develop their speaking and listening skills, increase

their confidence, self esteem and their awareness of themselves as participants and

agents of influence in the world. Schools across the conurbations of Manchester and

Sheffield were invited to apply to take part in the project, and 4 schools were

selected, 2 from each location. Each school was allocated time with one or both

community geographers for up to 6 days during the project working with the

geography teacher and a GCSE geography class.

The google map below highlights the topography that separates the two Northern

Conurbations, the darker green area is an upland area of scenic beauty protected by

National Park status. The rugged nature of the terrain limits flows between the two

conurbations, the main East / West motorway the M62 skirts to the north of this

upland area, and doubles the journey distance from approximately 40 miles to 80

miles. Snake Pass and Woodhead Pass are two A roads that wind their way over the

landscape and are often referred to on radio travel updates especially during winter

months when the roads are often closed due to snow. The older A 625 closed in

1979 after an on going repair battle with landslips, today it provides a textbook site

for geography examination classes for many local schools.

Flirting with Space


The map key highlights the many places and spaces employed during the

collaborative project including planning lunches, car journeys and site visits. As

contemporary geographers we were keen to track our engagement with spaces and

used freely available Internet digital maps.

16.30 We’ve worked at lots of different spaces. Morrison’s cafe in Eccles was typical. I just had to eat an Eccles cake while I was there. Sue and I create our spaces for collaboration wherever is convenient. It doesn’t limit our conversation beyond having to be careful not to mention names of schools, teachers or students. I wonder if being a teacher allows you to switch off to interference. I silence the buzz of a busy cafe but I don’t feel that the space silences any of the ways we work together. (John)

The role of the project in creating the identity of community geographer

Our awareness of each other in a professional capacity before the project, led to us

assuming that our prior backgrounds, age and experience would be similar, that we

would share similar approaches, we made assumptions about each others work

ethics, leaving much unsaid as we co constructed a new role, whilst maintaining our

existing professional roles.

15.15 There is always a sense of great relief when a post for a role is filled by a skilled practitioner whose abilities you are confident about. It was critical that the two work together but as the role was loose and ill defined there was potential for tension as the roles were created and developed. I had worked with Sue previously and knew that she would bring her experience of working with trainees in the classroom and her current academic research to the project and it would be much richer as a result. Reflecting now I made many assumptions about how we would work. Boundaries of professional time stretched pleasantly into personal space. How we each saw Geography as a subject and the project itself were never unpacked as we had a prior professional relationship, we trusted and assumed that we had similar views and understandings(Bermingham and Lyon 2007). (John)

Flirting with Space


Emailing became a primary method of communication, part of the process in

constructing our new roles, as community geographers across the 40 mile divide.

During this project John used 3 email addresses – home, work & gmail and Sue

used 2 email addresses – home & work. Communicating via email generally occurs

sat at a swivel desk chair, back straight facing a desktop computer screen. The

familiar Microsoft office icons lulls one into professional codes of behavior including

an implicit, rhythm of engagement within the internet highway during acceptable

working hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. We never had a conversation about how and

when to email, we socially, dialogically constructed the role of community

geographer through our practice.

Emails addresses of our home & work emails use our actual names, a professional

hello as messages sit expectantly within an inbox, our home/work email addresses

are so similar i.e. JLyon/ JHLyon / J.H.Lyon it is not obvious for others to know the

source of an email, whether home or work origin. During the 6 months setting up of

the project, as we gained confidence in our roles we moved from emails that were

sent to both work & home email addresses to a single email address.

John consistently sent emails from his work email address (only 3 instances from

other emails): 16 to Sue at home, 13 to Sue at work, 8 to Sue at home & work, and 4

emails with a wider circulation of Sue plus others. Sue sent all her emails to John at

work with 22 emails from her home email and 26 from her work email. 9 emails sent

to a wider audience including John, all from her work email. We consistently used

our work email addresses when our correspondence included others, our

professional role evident to others. We rarely emailed out of the working day (8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.), if we did the emails were to a work email address with the assumption

that the other would read in work hours.

The rhythms and flows of the collaboration over the 18 month project took us through

the early planning days (March to June 2011) prior to the launch of the pilot project

with teachers (July 2011) to working with students and teachers in their classrooms

(September to March) and community visits with students and teachers (October to

June) to the dissemination phase attending conferences (January to July 2012) and

writing up the project for funders and wider audiences (May to August 2012).

Flirting with Space


Emailing felt a ‘safe’ place to communicate, bounded by professional codes of

temporal conduct, assuming the ‘other’ was the only gaze as we exposed, explored

and questioned our tentative thoughts and ideas. Emails buffered the intensity of the

13 site visits (8 within schools and 5 in the local community), the pattern of our

collaborative working created a rhythmic engagement shown in the table below.

Nature of

collaboration

Face to

Face

Planning

Emailing

Ideas

Mobiles

Texting /

voice

Site Visit Face to

Face

Debrief

Emailing

Reflections

Space Work

location or

Domestic

Internet

Flows

across 40

miles

Flows to

update / track

movements

School

OR

Community

Café or

Public

House

Internet

Flows

across 40

miles

Time 10 a.m. to

3 p.m.

During

8 a.m. - 6

p.m.

8 p.m. –

10.50 p.m.

OR

7 a.m. –

9 a.m.

60 – 100

minute

lessons

OR

90 minute -

full day

2 hours

following

site visit

During

8 a.m. –

6 p.m.

With the multiple site visits of the Community Geographer role, there was an implicit

expectation that personal mobiles would be used for communication (no phone

provided for role). Mobile phones are part of the daily rhythm of a UK educational

professional. Our working day boundary became extended and blurred by the usage

of our mobile phones for collaborative calls and texts messages. Mobile phone

texting as a form of communication is different to emailing and the acceptable time

zone of usage went beyond the working day time band of emailing. Texts as early as

7.11 a.m. or as late as 10.50 p.m. did not faze us. The occasions where we felt it

was OK to communicate beyond the unspoken, implicit working day hours involved

finalizing arrangements for the public face of our roles – meeting others.

16.25 Visiting the University Campus is an interesting experience. I think the first time I was both excited and bit nervous to be going to an academic space. Getting there is the first challenge and once there you find the official car park is too small for ordinary visitors and the other car park is almost impossible to find. A pole that is opened by intercom is the first barrier to entry and the signage to anywhere else isn’t too clear. The cafe is very welcoming though. Not getting a phone signal means that the first couple of times finding Sue’s room was impossible without asking, but everyone is very friendly. It certainly isn’t daunting for me, but I imagine it could well be for others. (John)

Flirting with Space


Whilst students at one of the project schools were explicitly investigating

public/private boundaries in relation to CCTV technologies within their school and

local town centre we were implicitly negotiating public/private selves re emailing and

mobile phone technologies.

The significance of semiotic spaces experienced during the project.

The role of a Community Geography implies a duality, an existence within formal

geographical educational spaces, bounded by regulations including those that act as

a barrier to potential ‘dangerous’ individuals within a climate of fear to safeguard

children, and informal local community spaces including residential and retail zones

where access and behaviour is also under surveillance. Our engagement within both

was always fleeting, temporary, a shared existence in a liminal space.

Entering professional educational spaces in the UK involves a period of time for

checking credentials, an imposed waiting time in a holding area whilst checks are

made and others are contacted to collect you, closed doors hinder progress into the

building, and block visual access to the work in progress. Schools have incorporated

a range of technologies to keep safe those at work inside, one of the project schools

has finger print recognition technology as well as CCTV cameras in every room.

Door entry systems, pressing buttons to engage with disembodied voices, is the first

stage of the controlled, regulated entry process to a holding area where signatures

and identification procedures take place. One is made to feel suspicious, a potential

danger as identity checks take place. This feeling of alienation, as we occupied

temporary liminal spaces can also occur as we enter others professional work

places.

16.05 I felt out of place, this was someone else’s space. Richard offered to show me where John was, I resisted, felt uneasy I might be intruding. As I waited in a boardroom style room, I started questioning does space control, regulate our behavior. I had never been one to agree with determinism, believing I do have some elements of agency, that I am not just part of an ecosystem. What was bothering me? I was in a building full of doors hiding hidden spaces, the lack of signage highlighted that what lay beyond was not for me. I felt penned in, in a holding bay. I didn’t feel welcome, as the mysteries of this work place were kept hidden. Surrounding me were colorful images on the walls, I counted 23 adult male images and only 12 females. The colors of blue chairs and grey door helped intensify the feeling I was in a male space. (Sue)

Flirting with Space


Feeling ‘out of place’ is a human response to an unfamiliar environment,

environments can be designed to remind individuals of their place within society.

Arranging a visit for students to the local council chambers and Mayors Office

provided us with the opportunity to consider how space controls our thoughts and

actions. Inner sanctums with controlled temporal and spatial access, cloaked in

visual signage of power and reminders of the past, provided an uncomfortable

controlling experience within semiotic spaces. Traces of the past added to the gaze

of our actions, prior to the entrance of the Leader of the Council and the Mayor we

felt watched without the need for CCTV surveillance as we waited in the council

chamber evidence of the affective nature of encounters with spaces, ‘Thus, we all

know, certain places can and do bring us to life in certain ways, whereas others do

the opposite. It is this expressive quality of place which has recently lead to the

emphasis on performance in geography.’ (Thrift 2003: 93). The council chambers did

not energise us and bring us to life, instead the space was successful in controlling

and limiting our involvement in this place.

Within the project there was a range of practice from teachers allowing students

interests and opinions to delimit the places studied during the project to teachers

who selected the ‘places’ of study

‘the meaning has already been determined for them (students) by professionals

using the grammar of representation that attempts to limit the range of

interpretations’ (Gaines 2006:177).

Just as some teachers controlled the places to be studied for pedagogical reasons,

we controlled the spaces of encounters for the participant teachers at the launch of

the project, justified at the time for creating conditions for collaboration on neutral

territory. Space is never neutral, the semiotics of interior space provides a symbolic

representation created to maintain an established social distribution of power (ibid).

16.15 Pubs seem to be a feature of our visits to School A, maybe because it is rare for us to have a pub meal in a typical working day. I normally have a cheese baguette from the refectory at my keyboard, answering emails whilst eating. To be out of ‘work’ on a field visit to a school and finishing before lunch feels almost naughty, as if skiving from ‘real’ work. On one occasion as we left the school entrance to our 2 cars to drive to a pub my mobile went from my partner saying he was at the nearby hospital and was about to go for lunch could he join us. We arranged to meet at the pub car park next door to the school. The heavens opened, we were engulfed in a downpour. In a convoy we made our way to a pub about 4 miles away. We arrived still under a raincloud as we searched for coins for the parking meter, the pub was close to the airport. The service was incredibly slow, I felt I couldn’t comment as our waiter was a past student of mine. (Sue)

Flirting with Space


Launching the pilot project was planned with collaboration and pedagogy at the

forefront, the spaces for the launch day were considered empirically, accessible to all

participants via road, or rail within a similar travel time. An unfamiliar location for all

was deemed fair, and was considered to offer an exploratory adventure away from

the spaces in which we all daily professionally worked in. Creating the conditions for

openness and new ways of investigating places was our intention. We were buoyed

with enthusiasm as we planned the day in detail, incorporating a range of spaces to

collaborate in from a church hall, to a hotel conference room. We incorporated

activities to consider flows and images within spaces as we walked through the

urban location and the emotional impact the spaces had on us.

By failing to confront the importance of ‘space’ at the start of our collaboration we

unwittingly added to the demands on the teachers. By choosing an unfamiliar urban

location for the launch we created a shared liminal space for the 4 teachers, an

unsettling in between space rather than an energizing creative space. The unfamiliar

spaces were littered with signs that controlled rather than liberated. The semiotics of

spaces require careful consideration, hindsight is useful and appropriate for a pilot

project such as ours.

15.10 The journey had started over 12 months ago, by May 2011 we were both in position, our new role agreed with our respective employers, John as project leader as well as one of the two community geographers he pump primed time into the project to ensure an effective start as we negotiated a new project and our new roles. During May 2012 Sue was in a position to pump prime time into the project as deadlines for outputs, in particular this paper drew close. A massive, affective tipping point had occurred during a session with our evaluator after a field trip to Parkhill (Sheffield) with one of the schools. After an extensive debrief about the project, our evaluator talked us through the challenges that lay ahead for us if we aimed for publication in an international journal. Talking about the unequal motivations between any two researchers as they come to produce papers was unsettling (Sue & John, face to face.)

The table below provides an overview of the collaborative project, highlighting the

collaboration between the two Community Geographers within a vague ambiguous

role, sharing liminal in-between spaces, resulting in an unsettling yet energizing,

reflective, creative space to explore and develop a deeper understanding of space.

Students Teachers Place Managers

Community Geographers

Students Yes – some evidence. Inequalities

Limited, varied across 4 schools

Unequal, experts sharing their

Informal respectful relationship – use of first names.

Flirting with Space


can be exposed

views – at best professional interest in students views. Semiotic Spaces controlled discourse

Unequal

Teachers Limited – at best professional interest in students views, examination preparation and model answers paramount for others

Very Limited – discourse of time poor and space offered as reasons.

Limited, access to resources including semiotic spaces

Access to up to date pedagogical resources, freeing time, arranging visits - balanced against surveillance (prior roles), limited collaboration

Place Managers

Professional Role dominated, marketing messages took priority. At best professional interest in students views. Semiotic spaces controlled discourse. Unequal

On school premises power with teachers, in other Semiotic spaces power with place managers

Limited – professional rules of engagement

Access to others, resources and spaces – Respectful, professional rules of engagement

Community Geographers

Students had an informal respectful relationship Unequal relationship

Prior known role dominant Power and surveillance limited aspects of collaboration. Teachers gatekeepers to students and classroom spaces.

Limited, access to resources and spaces

Yes professionally enhanced Occupying liminal and semiotic spaces

The collaboration project as an experience of transience, flirtation and change

Our journey of exploration into our understandings of the term ‘space’ and its impact

on our collaboration has been both enlightening and unsettling. We began the

Flirting with Space


project by taking our understanding of core concepts of space and place, keystones

within the work, as a given. As we noted at the outset, space became the unspoken

backdrop of our collaboration and as geographers our assumptions about shared

understandings colluded largely to exclude considering the impact on our work. At

one level the project has been a significant success in all four schools. We explored

different pedagogies, the students have been energized, enthused and challenged

and feedback from both teachers and students has been very positive.

However that one key element, thinking through spaces, was rarely considered until

after each event. As our tentative flirtation with space developed into a deeper

awareness of its potentially unsettling nature we began to see the power space has

to silence, challenge or support collaboration and the significant impact that it has

had on the project.

15.44 We came to the project as two reflective practitioners, in addition to representing two bodies of knowledge and status. John representing the GA(Association), the subject association of Geography teachers in the UK, an association active in discussions with the coalition government about the future of geography. Sue brought the weight of MMU,(University) a university with a reputation for research in education as well as Grade 1 status for initial teacher education. What I hadn’t considered until the today (May 22

nd 2012) was the impact we brought to the spaces we occupied with students and

teachers. An invisible cloak surrounds us, silenced by our individual selves yet highly visible to each other, and most importantly visible to the public – students, and teachers. This really came to light looking back at our email correspondence when Sue asked if she could assist on the trip to Parkhill. Our prior roles as teachers kicked in, yes of course what teacher wouldn’t want a low student teacher ratio. Yet we were not teachers. (Sue & John, face to face)

Of course at the outset as geographers we considered space and spaces at a

superficial level. We thought carefully about both our spaces for conversation and

our meeting spaces. For our first face to face meeting with teachers we identified

what we considered to be a neutral space. This was to be a meeting point in a hotel

in a town almost equidistant from the two areas where the project was centred. With

a sense of fairness we hoped to create a space we imagined would provide

inspiration and challenge. In fact as a liminal space it also proved to be unsettling

and indeed intimidating at a variety of scales. On reflection both the town and the

hotel room where we held our meeting became unequal public and private power

spaces. The hotel manager was probably more aware of this power that we were.

Yet even with the advice we were given we created spaces that set up an

unintended and unequal power relationship between us, as the community

geographers and the teachers present. Certainly in part this was created through the

use of PowerPoint technology and its focus on ‘presenter as expert’. This also

Flirting with Space


unwittingly created a hierarchy of perceived importance for the community

geographers, which we only unpicked at a later stage as our professional

relationship developed.

Our largely unthinking use of space also caused us to engage in an encounter with

students in a meeting room identified by the teachers as a suitable meeting space.

Our aim was to informally explore a range of ideas and issues with the students. We

expected collaboration to occur without really considering what messages the space

was signalling to the young people about their value and status as contributors and

collaborators on the project. Though fortunately we didn’t alienate these young

people through this early encounter with us, the semiotic space proved more than

unsettling. We certainly discovered less about their spatial geographies than we

intended and our reflection of the activity was a low point on the project. We would

certainly take a very different approach to setting up any similar encounters with

students in the future, asking for their views on the spaces to collaborate in.

In none of the encounters with teachers or students did we mirror the practice we

were developing between ourselves as we flirted with space. As community

geographers we were constantly negotiating spaces for our encounters and

reflecting on their impact on ourselves as collaborators, in future projects ‘space’ will

play a more central role, the concept needs to be explored collaboratively and the

spaces for encounters, multiplicity of relations considered together and reflected

upon after each engagement, appreciating that space is always under

construction.

Collaborating in the field for ‘The Making My Place in The World’ project has been an

emotional experience and can be likened to the array of emotions experienced

during flirtation and courtship culminating in an academic ‘high’ delivering a

presentation at an international conference followed by attentive delegates joining us

for further discussion leaving a wonderful energizing afterglow that to domestic

partners may appear suspicious. Academic respect from peers can only ever be

second best to respect from loved ones. We have heightened respect for May as he

distances himself from the ‘wild side’ of research, and take our own steps to protect

our vulnerable boundaries from the gaze of others.

Flirting with Space


References

Amin, A. and N. J. Thrift (2002). Cities. Oxford, Polity. Association, T. G. "The Geographical Association." Retrieved 22nd May 2012, from http://www.geography.org.uk/. Bermingham, S. and J. Lyon (2007). Does Place Matter? Geography Teacher Education Conference 2007. Bristol, Geographical Association. Coffey, A. (1999). The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and Representation of Identity. London, SAGE Publications Ltd. Edensor, T., Ed. (2010). Geographies of Rhythm: Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies. Farnham, Ashgate Publishing Limited. Egland, K. L., B. H. Spitzberg, et al. (1996). "Flirtation and Conversational Competence in Cross-Sex Platonic and Romatic Relationships." Communication Reports 9(2). Gaines, E. (2006). "Communication and the Semiotics of Space." Journal of Creative Communications 1(2): 173-180. Hubbard, P., R. Kitchin, et al., Eds. (2006). Key Thinkers on Space and Place. London, SAGE Publications Ltd. Kray, L. J. and C. C. Locke (2008). "To Flirt or Not to Flirt? Sexual Power at the Bargaining Table." Negotiation Journal: 483-489. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London, SAGE Publications Ltd. May, R. A. B. (2003). ""Flirting with Boundaries": A Professor's Narrative Tale Contemplating Research on the Wild Side." Qualitative Inquiry 9(3): 442-465. Moran, D. (2011). "Between outside and inside? Prison visiting rooms as liminal carceral spaces." GeoJournal. Simpson, R., J. Sturges, et al. (2009). "Transient, unsettling and creative space: Experiences of liminality through the accounts of Chinese students on a UK- based MBA." Management Learning 41(1): 53-70. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace : journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell.

http://www.geography.org.uk/

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Taylor, C. (2009). "Towards a geography of education." Oxford Review of Education 35(5): 651-669. Thrift, N. (2003). Space: The Fundamental Stuff of Geography. Key Concepts in Geography. N. Clifford, J., S. Holloway, L., S. Rice, P. and G. Valentine. London, SAGE Publications Ltd: 85-96. University, M. M. "Manchester Metropolitan University." Retrieved 22nd May 2012, from http://www.mmu.ac.uk/.

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/

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