Here’s Dr Lucy Robinson’s report on a great visit from students from Davison High:
On Friday 14th September a group of 14 Year 10 students taking the BTEC in Fashion from Davison High School came to the archive to explore attitudes to body adornment (particularly tattooing). Their teacher Ms Jane Green had arranged the visit to help them think in different ways about their own projects ….
As well as being thoroughly enjoyable, it was a very useful way of exploring how the Observing the 80s project could engage with BTEC level students, and also thinking about its possibilities beyond History and the humanities. After a short introduction to the archive and to the history of tattooing the students pinpointed some interesting ideas about how tattooing itself could be seen as a form of Life History (as a way of a being an ‘individual’ and as a way of marking important life experiences) as well as some of the down sides of leaving a permanent mark on the body. We looked at two Directives.
Firstly we all looked at Part One, Spring on Social Divisions. In the final part of this section the Directive asks
Imagine that you enter a bus or train. All the window seats are occupied and you must sit next to someone.
What thoughts might go through your mind as you make your decision? Whom would you prefer not to sit next to and why? Be honest!
The second Directive we looked at was part 2 of Summer 1999.
Have you, or has anyone close to you, thought of having any part of your body pierced or tattooed? We would be interested in hearing what you think about these forms of body decorations whatever your personal experience. If you do have personal experience of either form, please tell us about it in detail – when you had it done, why you wanted it done, where it was carried out, which part of your body, what other people thought about it. If you had it done years ago, what do you feel about it now? What do you feel in general about body piercing and tattoos?
Stories please… and drawings or photos if that’s possible. Please take care about confidentiality. Don’t use real names.
Listening to the students talk about how they should treat the sources, and how they would like their own words to be treated, reiterated many of the discussions we have had as a team around privacy, respect and the importance of understanding observers’ contributions in context. They also came up with intuitive insights in how to make sense of what observers said, and how they said it. They noted the informality of the responses which made a change from the sort of evidence they might have come across elsewhere and made some useful distinctions between the archive as a building and as a collection of objects.
“ I enjoyed reading the letters from ages ago, because we got to see how that person thought’.
“I enjoyed looking at the archives because it is a piece of history. What fascinates me the most is how we have changed over the years and our view on social matters”.
“I now know what an archive is and why people write, and that sometimes people don’t write and answer the question they just write about anything they want to get off their chest”. (This particular point seems to sum up the intrigue and possible frustrations of working with the MOP sources)
They also found some of their own expectations challenged. “I know now that not everyone dislikes tattoos and piercing”
“I didn’t know that people were so fussed over who they sat next to on a bus”
“Today I enjoyed looking at past documents and seeing what people thought about other people, body adornments and the world. I’ve learnt that not many of the documents show that people like tattoos”
Students also developed a sense of change over time (and not). One student learnt that “even in the 90s people still had quite narrow minded view concerning body adornment.”
We are looking forward to seeing some of the students’ Day Diaries of their visit and we also asked them to think of questions they would ask the observers themselves. The following sum up the breadth of their ideas?
Where would you sit on a log flume?
What do you think about face tan?
Do you like the idea of being documented in history?
[Would] you change any political decision made by the Coalition?
What do they think about make-up?
Do you like Tattoos and why? And how much have you changed since 1990?
Have you had a Vajazzle and what is your opinion of them?
Update from Dr Robinson 24 Nov: Last night I met up with Davison teacher Jane Green. Her creative and inspiring use of MOP to develop her textiles curriculum opened up a whole range of possibilities for me. I was struck by how she had taken our discussion of respondent’s writing about body adornment and tattooing and fed it back into the pupil’s own design work. From image – to narrative – back to image. But above all I was particularly gratified to see that my own inkwork had inspired one students’ work. From my ‘taking care of business’-bread and roses arm piece.