Yes, the inaugural walking interview has been conducted!  Hooray!! 

The sun was shining, it was dry and not too windy or cold.  This isn't just the British obsession with the weather, it may turn out to be significant in getting people to walk and talk with us - stay tuned for the final verdict in a couple of months time....

The talking bit was really interesting.  This is why I wanted to join this project - to find out people's stories and histories.  What this building used to be, why it is special to someone, what happened here.  My mind is still putting together the stories and places.

Then, an unexpected thing happened (although that says more about me separating work and personal lives) - we stopped to talk to someone else.  An old photograph had been promised, as my interviewee had links with the building now occupied by someone else.  It was a really interesting few minutes for all of us, plus it demonstrates perfectly the community that some say doesn't exist in Eastside.  No community?  Well, I saw some today!

In fact two unexpected things happened - the other was the photographs that I was given.  We have permission to use them in our project so I expect they will appear hereabouts before long (but that's technical, so I'm not doing it!).  Those photos, plus the links with our photographer friend, Dan, and the archives at Birmingham Central Library look really promising for this project being an important local record.

One complaint, though - the bag with the equipment in is really heavy!  I hope our project has a budget for massage or physiotherapy....  On the other hand, I really didn't notice it when we were actually doing the walking and talking - testament to how interesting it was.

Finally, are walking interviews worth doing?  On the evidence of one interview - yes!  I think that we followed a route that had been thought out beforehand, but still there was an occasion when we looked at a building "while we are here", so we did see things that were prompted by our being out and about.

Sadly, tomorrow's interview has been cancelled for now because of illness, but if anyone reading this thinks it looks like fun - it is!  Get in touch, we still need people to talk to us.

Now, Phil's got all the techno-stuff to play with, so time for coffee. 

Where's that footstool gone?

Yes, I see them in my sleep - those green leaflets saying "WANTED: Tales, stories and histories about Digbeth, Deritend and Eastside!" Many of them are now loitering around the said areas, in cafes, pubs and, hopefully, in homes.  Electronic versions are also circulating in the ether. 

And - joy! - a couple of offers of help have come in!  Two interviews have been arranged for next week and I'm waiting for another couple to get back to me, so its not-quite-panic-stations-but-slightly-stressing.  Will the technology work?  Will we be able to hear the recording?  Will people turn up?  If they do, will they speak?  Well, yes, apart from the techno bits, I've done this before - people do usually turn up (eventually) and even the shy ones end up talking.  After all, this is the best bit of the research process - actually meeting people - and I promise that it is fun for the interviewees, too.  It's not often that people really do want you to talk about yourself, is it!

So, if you have read the leaflet, come and take one of us on a guided walk around Eastside.  We only need another 28 people!  It'll be fun - and good exercise.

Busy couple of weeks.  I'm going over to the newly rebranded Birmingham City University (formerly UCE Birmingham) tomorrow to give a talk about the project and one or two other bits 'n pieces.  An opportunity to spread the word a bit, especially among those who are more actively connected in to planning practice than ivory tower geographers.

We had an interesting meeting last week with Pete James from Birmingham Central Library.  He's library's Head of Photographs and a friend of Dan Burwood who we've hooked up with for potential collaboration.  Hopefully we'll be able to get a joint project going linking some of Dan's ideas for a project relating to community portraits along with some of the historical material that Pete can give us access to, combining these with the stories we're hoping to get from our interviewees.

On that subject, Jane's put together our project flier which we've been distributing, partly thanks to the Eastside Community Group and partly with myself and James having a quiet afternoon wandering around local pubs and leaving fliers on the bar.  It's a hard life sometimes.  Jane is hoping to hook up with a guy from the St Basil's Centre, a big homeless charity which is based out of a former church on Heath Mill Lane, deep within our study area.  So things are moving along.  Of course then comes the difficult task of deciding quite how the recording should be transcribed with all kinds of techie decisions about how to link the transcript to the GPS tracks.  Which, naturally, I'm immensely looking forward to, given my status as resident geek.

blogging, that is. 

As Co-Investigator on this project, and having been suitably shamed into action by my co-workers enthusiasm for this blogging malarkey, I though it was about time something went on here from me.  To be fair I have just moved jobs to uni of Manc, and the task of setting up and running a new Masters course in a completely new dept has eaten up the time somewhat.

So first impressions of how the project is going: 

there's lots of potential for collaboration with other people working in, on and around Eastside.  My long time friend Dan is a photographer who is working on social aspects of community in the area and has produced some amazing shots of 'life' as it unfolds in the pubs and streets of Digbeth.  Having known Dan for ages and really loving his work the potential of working together is exciting.

playing with all this technical equipment is going to raise a helluva lot of practical issues... as the others have been noting, even something as simple as recording outside, whether it is ambient noise or voices, is fraught with difficulties.  The issues raised by 10 mins in the quad at birmingham uni last week with a noise-meter could probably provide enough material for a 'how to' methods paper. (NB, no ones's saying that this would be an interesting paper. but it would be a paper nevertheless, and I'm sure there was something in the proposal about methods;)

Finally, now i have a mere 3 hours a day to kill on the train i have been able to do some reading around the new 'mobilities paradigm' and the associated field of 'mobile methodologies' within the social sciences.  I was initially excited by the possibilities of using the project to explore nomadic ethics (a la Braidotti), and the difference that moving makes to people's experience of space.  The literature I have read so far has totally underwhelmed me, as it does the classic geography trick of identifying yet another 'overlooked' object of study (in this case, mobile communities) and then applying all the same conceptual approaches to them.  nothing really new there from what i can see.... and yes I am a whinging git... we'll read some more and see whether it really does lead anywhere other than the emporer's new clothes.

so there you have it my first ever blog.  I have crumbled and joined the blogging generation.  before you know it there'll be pictures and everything.

This is evans, blogging off.

In one of the Hitch Hikers' books Douglas Adams noted the tendency among scientists to spend millions of research money and time to prove stuff that everybody already knew anyway.  And it's a staple of the Today Programme to have a chuckle at whatever the latest madness is from some American research team.

Today I feel like I've done something to join these proud ranks.  Jane & I went out with a decibel meter and recorded the noise levels at various points around Eastside.  By no means was this a comprehensive survey (we'll doubtless have to spend several days filling in the gaps), but it was enough to test the principle.  The idea was to create a contour map - like you might do for hills, but shading it in according to noise levels rather than height.

As part of the ArcGIS mapping software there's a tool called Spatial Analyst which will create contours automatically from point data - I used an Inverse Distance Weighted model.  Don't ask me what this means, because I honestly don't know.  But it produces some pretty maps, like this one:

The pinker colours show higher noise levels.  Shock horror, the High Street and area around the bus mall by Moor Street Station are noisier than wandering along the canal.  Bet you never saw that one coming.  Will have to go and survey all the cross streets along the southern side of the railway tracks - Heath Mill Lane where we walked is particularly noisy because of the buses, but others won't be.

Still, I'm feeling happier now that we're doing some of the fieldwork we told the ESRC we'd undertake.  Particularly happy that Jane is getting on with making contacts.  My head is back in teaching at the moment now that the kids are back for a new term.  Spent the last few days writing a lecture about feminist research epistemologies for the second years.  I bet they'll be as happy to hear about it as I was to write it.  Still this department has 8 female teaching staff compared to 48 men - somebody needs to say something about gender inequalities and I guess it'll be me.

Much as I love the office-based part of research (especially on a rainy day like today!), it was a real treat to get out yesterday and start meeting people!  Two important things came out of my foray into Eastside:

1)  I managed to find my way to a specific place!  Don't laugh - lots of geographers are very bad at this.  Being a rural geographer originally, I have no problem with good old OS maps in remote countryside, but maps of urban areas are often really hard to follow especially if you're on foot.  One-way streets and other things useful for drivers aren't as important as whether you can get through the end of a dead end street, where the foot bridge is or where - exactly - you can cross the park.

2) I was reminded how easy it is to slip into 'dualisms' - where something is either 'this' or 'that'.  I visited two people yesterday - one who works in and with the community and one who works in one of the newer buildings in Eastside.  It's so tempting to think that these buildings, which may have replaced historic, loved places are frequented by people who couldn't care less, but, of course, this is completely wrong.  The person I visited is very interested in, and takes care to support, local businesses and services.  She is as passionate about the local community as the rest of us.

Anyway, the search for people to interview has begun....