Pushing it too far at Maple House
In late 2014, struggling with the challenges of Maple House’ ever-changing population of young people, and a workshop space that was often filled (because of the young people’s mental ill health) with silences and ‘elephants in the room’, I often felt my instincts to be lacking. My field notes record:
I am bouncing against the walls of a three-dimensional space whose walls are injunctions. I must avoid assuming the young people’s consent, but I must also not impose on them to obligation to state it. I must be led, but not into dark and harmful places, and yet I must not skate over darkness. I must develop and acknowledge that there is a relationship between them and me, but not over-structure it. (Nov 2014)
Despite the staff’s endorsement of a practice based on fluidity, flexibility and a lack of expectations, I searched for some guiding positive purpose to my workshops. I decided to work with the current group of inpatients – all young women, many of whom seemed fiercely intelligent – on creating a booklet of stories together, based on paintings.
At the first session, the girls unanimously chose Degas’ ‘Girls Combing Their Hair’. The story flowed from them surprisingly freely – all of them in agreement that the girls in the painting were not enjoying a sense of idyllic peace, but being keenly scrutinised by a group of men.
I am bouncing against the walls of a three-dimensional space whose walls are injunctions. I must avoid assuming the young people’s consent, but I must also not impose on them to obligation to state it. I must be led, but not into dark and harmful places, and yet I must not skate over darkness. I must develop and acknowledge that there is a relationship between them and me, but not over-structure it. (Nov 2014)
Despite the staff’s endorsement of a practice based on fluidity, flexibility and a lack of expectations, I searched for some guiding positive purpose to my workshops. I decided to work with the current group of inpatients – all young women, many of whom seemed fiercely intelligent – on creating a booklet of stories together, based on paintings.
At the first session, the girls unanimously chose Degas’ ‘Girls Combing Their Hair’. The story flowed from them surprisingly freely – all of them in agreement that the girls in the painting were not enjoying a sense of idyllic peace, but being keenly scrutinised by a group of men.
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Enthused, I typed up their story and read it out to them at the beginning of the next session. Bringing out my books of paintings again, I was met by a tense and stony silence. Two girls showing a small flicker of interest in Chagall’s ‘The Dream’, I chose to interpret the atmosphere of resistance as uncertainty or apathy, and to pursue my plan. The same two girls made some contributions that enabled us to bring together a story about an angry, isolated woman.
A moment arose when the character was stuck, immobile and proud, in the air, and I pushed them with questions: ‘What happens next? Does she land on the ground anywhere? What does she do there?’ One girl responded that she wanted a different way of life, to ‘change’, in some unspecified way – but it was clear that most of the others preferred to leave her there in her arrogance. In fact, in the ‘One Word Round the Circle’ game we had played beforehand as a warmup, they had paused and collectively decided to leave their heroine to be eaten by a predator. Should I have listened to this, and allowed them to leave their Chagall antiheroine hanging in the air? There was a clear message in their silence and reluctance and yet – in a session focused on open two-way storytelling communication! – I chose not to listen but to plough ahead towards a somewhat redemptive ending. Following this second session I was sent the results of an informal feedback exercise the teacher, sensing their dissatisfaction, had run with the girls. In amongst some positive comments was a strong shared view of where I was going wrong: Cleaner GraphicsLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi.
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