Tamar Fiss
My question:
How can I promote awareness to migrated women hardship stories using creative sensory mediation
I manifest the stories of migrated women hardship creating my expressive interpretation of their stories, and while integrating my hardship to the object I create a new narrative that enable people to identify and immerse into our sensory experiences.
Why:
A hardship occurs to me a year ago, while living in London for only one year. My world collapsed, I was shattered. I was in the process of making me a home, and my past home seems distant and unfamiliar. After accepting some help from a friend I gradually pull myself together and began a self-exploration journey, using mindfulness, support from my new community and therapy I decided to research how women such as myself experience their hardship, cope with it and share their stories. I wanted to develop a method to help women cope with hardship, hoping to learn from their stories and experiences, what will help me overcome my hardship and help other women to do so as well, the power of support and community. I was very focused on creating a product or evoking an emotion and focused on the outcome, and it took me a while to open up and understand that the main focus is the process, the way and the experience and the outcome will evolve from it.
I decided to create a quilt (physical and metaphorical) to manifest my project because:
The core to my project is the connection to me, through the quilt I can transform the stories of the women I interviewed into artefact that tell my intimate interpretation to the story in a way that will allow people to relate and connect to the object with a memory they might have.
I was not able to produce a group meeting with the Israeli women I interviewed. I consulted Paul about it and he offered me the idea of a quilt to communicate the voices and the shared stories of the women I interviewed. I loved this idea - I research the quilt history, anthropology wise it consider to be a creative outlet for women to share their stories and create a supportive community.
I approached dozens of women who agreed to share their stories and allow me to pick a segment from it and create a non-judgemental sensory object.
I felt that I have to use my personal experience and journey as my project since it became everything I was thinking about and everything that was going on in my world so I couldn’t just ignore it. I hoped I might find it beneficial for me and for other women to receive support from the community and reciprocated help.
I believe that sharing stories can help other women understand and empathize with what women might experience when having hardship as immigrant/relocated women, even without being migrated or without experiencing hardship.
How:
Since I was looking for stories and experiences, I used qualitative research. I was focusing on women and I tend it to feministic research as well.
Interviews:
My original focus group was migrated women from all over the world, which I narrowed down and finally constricted it to Israeli women in the UK.
I reached out to women using facebook community group and asked them to participate in my research by being interviewed, intervention, or both. I received warm responses, and with some of them, I was able to proceed to an interview.
Secondary research - I followed ideas from Ortal Slobodin book - Hidden passenger, after interviewing her. I read her book and felt very inspired by the potential of the understanding of the core of migrated Israeli women. I’m using some of her methods to improve intimacy with the women I interviewed, hoping to receive higher engagement and more immersive experience throughout the interventions. I followed some of her resources (listed in the bibliography section) and used them as secondary research as well.
I was also inspired by the concept and the research of “Strange Material” to explore storytelling methods and interesting techniques, I enjoyed the playful way used by the research.
The interviews were through the storytelling of hardship and experiences using sensory mediation and memories connected to them. I felt most women were very open and wanted to share their story and talk about themselves in a therapeutic way, maybe looking for a friend.
I documented and translated their stories in my blog.
Intervention phase I: I took objects from previous interviews: photos and songs that were meaningful, artefact and smells that I created from the stories that became significant, and present them, asked to interact with the object and to share their memories or feelings towards the object.
After 5-6 interventions, I reflected on my process, the outcomes and came up with the following:
Some images and objects created more empathy than others.
My questions were not focused enough.
I was not focused enough.
My documentations were not detailed enough.
I gained this new knowledge:
I should focus on the objects that create more empathy.
I should document using a recording app.
I should do a lateral intervention that engage with one sense at the time, so I can disconnect the background from the core of the sense and focus on specific emotions that it might produce.
I should expend the type of people for the intervention (men, non-immigrant British, etc).
.
Intervention phase II - one sense one person
Outcomes and new knowledge:
I was well prepared.
The intervention was more focused and produced new knowledge to the women I interviewed and of course to me.
I recorded most of them which allow me to feel more engaged with the conversation and have detailed notes when I reflect the conversation later at home.
I was able to find profound evidence for the connection between the senses and the feeling and between tangible and intangible (e.g. an object that generate emotions).
I have some new ideas to create artefacts on my quilt and I want to be able to create some intervention to see if I can create empathy with my artefact.
Conclusions:
Positive implications and what I’ve learned as a result of my process:
I became very focused on my process. I’m challenging myself and It allows me to open up to new opportunities, new people, listen to what is not being said, accept and learn from my mistakes, stop and reflect on every stage in my journey, reciprocate and learn.
I felt all women were happy to open up, talk about their emotions and experiences, and learning new things about themselves.
I acquired meaningful ways to approach research, how to conduct an effective non-judgemental interview, focus, empower and get empowered, inspired and accepted.
The first intervention felt meaningful to me was when I introduced F, with the artefact that I created inspired by her sensory memory and it generated a strong emotional reaction and brought her to tears. it made me feel pleased to be able to touch someone in such a profound way.
My learning edges:
My biggest challenge was to focus on the process and not the results. I’m a person who is very focused on functionality and outcomes, the bottom line.
It took me a while to step outside of my comfort zone and to experience the process.
My first intervention was completely out of my scope: I made a video clip of myself interacting with a t-shirt and representing the struggles I experience as part of my migration. I gradually learned to reflect and document my thought and feeling throughout the process, express my feeling and maddle with ideas and experiments. I’m comfortable with the tangible parts, the physical objects, the wiring, sewing and drawing.
What were the benefits and advantages to your stakeholders?
I try to vary my stakeholders to expand my research and my impact on a larger group. I try to find people that seem engaging, sincere and allow themselves emerge in the intervention and providing me with extensive, genuine answers. Since I gain more confidence in my research, I talk about my project, with most people I know, so I can diversify my knowledge, and I have been receiving fantastic feedback, new aspects to look into, new stakeholders to talk to, new expert to contact, research to check and it helped me in my research and my perspective.
What are the future implications and how has this now positioned you (and your stakeholders/community) at the end of this project.
I would like to approach the following and check the option to present my work and my story, to promote the awareness of the “migrated women’s experience”: JW3 and Migrated museum. I believe that using these sensory methods with storytelling can generate empathy and support and empower women who experience an identity crisis, and I would like to develop my research in this direction.
I brought my quilt to my therapist the other day, since I was not completely secured about the legitimacy of my project, and while I was standing on the quilt, telling the story behind each object and connecting it to me life and my experiences, it finally hit me that every element I used was about me, and affected my life, my memories and who I have become. I cried.
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