Mark So we're moving on to, I've lost count now, I think this is the fifth episode recording and I've not been able to track down many students, I've got two, but they're all off having sessions, which makes a lot of sense really. But I've got one of the presenters instead and I've got Sarah Dodds, who's one of my colleagues at DCAD. Now Sarah, so tell us who you are and what you do. Sarah So I'm Sarah Dodds and I work in DCAD as a digital learning advisor. So in my normal day job, I support all staff and students in all manner of digital skills. So that could be anything from the staff needing to learn how to use Blackboard, set up assignments, for example, all the way through to basic IT skills for students. Mark Now, what do you want to tell us about the session that you did today then? What was that? I was at that and it was excellent, of course, but do you want to just tell us what it was all about? Sarah So the afternoon workshop that I ran with my colleague Eirini was looking at different forms of presenting research work, how to reflect on that work or present a point from your research that you really want to get out to the public. So Eirini led on the zines project and I prefer to do junk journals or little scrapbooks that you can just put your personal thoughts in. So it's a very hands on cut stick, paste and write session. And I think everybody had a wonderful time. Mark (01:29.964) And that's one of the things like, this is the second of Sarah's workshops I've been to. And the other one was on crafting and data visualization through crafting. one of the things that Sarah does with her workshops is bring in all of her crafting experience. Do want to tell us a little bit about that and how that sort of resonates with the work that you do? Sarah So I've always been interested in art, particularly textiles. And on a whim, I went back to university and actually did a degree in textile art. So because I'm an artist, I belong to two groups in County Durham, Interface Arts, who are closely linked with the Oriental Museum, and Elvac, who are very specifically aimed at art in the community and wellbeing in art. So we run lots of workshops around the county. And that's where I started to think, could I bring this into the university to give students just that opportunity to think about alternatives form of presenting information. There are all sorts of things out there. We do lots of things like poster competitions. There is a competition annually called Dance Your PhD, where you have to express your research in dance. I tend to work with stitch and quilting. So I have got a number of quilts in the office that have been developed from poetry from my colleague Martina. But also when we look at data visualization, I've done a number of pieces that are very data organized. things like small squares work really well with quilting that we can translate data into like bar charts. But we also experiment with things like Lego and model making as well as drawing. So it just gives people an opportunity to just step away from that rigor of reading and writing and trying to get that conference proposal done and do a little bit more relaxation, wellbeing and also think about other ways that they can present that information that they've gathered through their research. Mark part of the impact and use for the stuff you're doing today is there's other ways to get at the work. Sarah Well, one of them is journaling and scrapbooking, is about really your own use. The others are about zines. Both of those are different ways to think about your PhDs, but also the zines is also an alternative way to get your message out to a different audience, I guess, or different aspects of what you do. That's it. think one of the reasons Eirini and I decided to do the session together was the fact that both the political point of view through the zines and that personal reflection point of view complemented each other really well. So it didn't matter whether you really wanted to tell somebody about something, whether you just wanted to write a note about how you felt about what you were doing at the time, that there was an alternative for that. Mark what do want the impact of this to be? Do you have a sort of vision for what you want students to go away from your sessions with, or maybe even bigger, how this changes what being a postgraduate researcher is in general? Sarah I think there is a large sort of study going on around the country about data visualisation and data physicalisation, but it's not well known in Durham. So it's about getting out the fact that there are alternative ways of presenting information and getting the message out that traditional universities like Durham don't usually work on. Most of the students think they're going to come in, they're going to do their literature review, they're going to collect their data, analyse it and write a thesis. But I really think that research should be far more than that. And through COVID, there was a huge surge in people who were looking at COVID data, particularly, but also weather data. So weather patterns and producing amazing works in knitting, quilting, sewing, model making, all sorts of things that they had the time to do because everybody was in lockdown. But now we're back in the real world and we're back at work all of the time people have stopped doing that. And I want to kind of keep that in the forefront of everybody so that they can just think about other ways they can do things that will also help their mental wellbeing because that's a really big part of Mark And also I'm going to say connection. Do you think there's a truth to that as well? think that's something you connect with as a feeling? Sarah I think so because when I work with data and I'm creating a piece of artwork, I live that data while I'm creating that artwork in a way that I can't do that if I'm simply creating a bar chart in Excel. It conveys the same data, but it doesn't have the same feeling. So when I'm sitting stitching, particularly if I'm doing anything by hand, I'm living that work. And the first data quilt I ever made was my first 50 years of travels. So when I was 50, I looked back over all the years and every place I'd ever been to is now stitched into a quilt. That quilt is the most fantastic piece of work I've ever done. And I really feel embodied that every time I put that quilt onto the bed, I remember those places that I went to, the people I met, the things that I experienced. And I think even if that is very scientific data that you've collected in a lab. you can relive that story of how you produced those experiments and what results you got. Where if you're just reading off a list of numbers and creating a bar chart, it's done and that's what's going in your thesis, but it's not you living your project, you know? Mark that's something that came out of the chat I had with Mary this morning, which was about the tactile nature of the work that she does and that there's a physicality there. And I like that data physicalisation. And so that sense of embodiment, embodying the data, but co-designing that, or not necessarily co-designing it, but sitting in a room with other people who are also crafting. And yes, I like writing retreats and we're all going away and sitting and tapping away on our laptops. If it's in a stately home, you find a nice little window seat and you feel all very, very Georgian and whatever with it all. It feels great. But there's something about sitting around a table, even something that's as dull and as kind of whitewashed and as, as clinical as a, as a teaching and learning centre workshop room that is homely about making stuff. It's, it's the Blue Peter thing of making things and sticking things and doing stuff with glue and all that sort of stuff. And it's so difficult to define, but there is something warming about that. It brings in that affective side, which as you mentioned all the way through and Eirini mentioned all the way through the workshop this afternoon is something that's missing from academia is that sense of affect and that sense of emotion. And there's something pleasurable and fun about making stuff that I think brings people together as well and opens up more doors to creativity and things. Does that make sense? Sarah It does. mean, one thing I do notice an awful lot when we're doing craft type activities, nobody looks at their phone. If I'm teaching an IT or digital skills class, half the class will be fiddling with their phone, checking the time, answering an email. And those other things that people get distracted by disappear when we clear the desk and just say, right, there's your paper, there's your glue, there's your scissors. This is what we're going to do. And all of a sudden it almost forces people to have that stop gap. And I'm a big fan of having that cup of tea there as well. I never say, don't have your cup of tea. That's always allowed, you know, or whatever you like to drink. But so people start to chat while they're working. So it's that very much a team effort really. And that's why it works so well with people with mental health problems because It gives them a platform to just do something physical, that tactile nature, but have that social interaction. And of course, a cup of tea. Mark Yeah, it calls a cup of tea. So finally, my final question is, is there stuff from these workshops being at this conference that you bring back into your practice? Is it a kind of two way thing? Sarah I think I've reached a point in my practice where I used to do that, but now I've got to a point where I'm confident and, you know, do it all the time. So what I might bring back is a comment that somebody might say. And I thought, well, I might be able to incorporate that in my next piece of artwork, or I never thought about that, or that's a really good way of thinking about it. And I think it's almost a generic sort of development with all those little comments that I store in the back of my head. So there's never a plan when I come back and say, okay, I'm going to change direction and do this. It's more of an amalgam of lots of little comments that sort of feed through and I kind of mull on over time to reach a point, you know? And it might be sometimes that I actually suddenly find myself doing something that I never thought I would do. know, there's no conscious thought behind it. It's very organic, the way things develop. Mark doing those workshops must be, know, normally doing workshops, you're standing at the front, you're going through PowerPoint slides, you're trying to get group activities going, you're trying to fend off all of the people who are criticizing your epistemological approach or something. But your workshops, I'm guessing, are kind of restorative in a way. They sort of, go out of them with more energy than you go into because you've had that chance to do a little bit of crafting with everybody else. Sarah Yeah, I always have, here's one I made earlier, but I also demonstrate. And so I am sitting at the table with the participants and that makes me just one of them. So it's not like I'm the teacher and they're the student anymore, that that's gone out of the window. It's, are a group with a common goal and we're all working together towards that goal. And that is very therapeutic for me as well. I always come out of those sessions so relaxed. Mark And me too. Yeah. So that's, yeah, that's why I, this is my recommendation. One of the recommendations from this podcast series is if you are at Durham, then look up the workshops from Sarah Dodds, Irini Tsukumi and Martina Deal. They all do very relaxing, creative, fun, just, yeah, just, just really enjoyable workshops. So yeah, look out for those in the future. Thanks Sarah. Thank you. I think that might round things up for the day because we've got one final session and then we're all off down the pub. yes, I'll talk to you later. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Sarah Bye.