Documentation of Reanimating Data workshops with Hideaway youth club girls' group in Manchester.

In 2019-2020 the ESRC funded 'Reanimating data: experiments with people, places and archives' (RAD). Part of the project involved staging a series of reanimations using data from interviews with young women from Manchester, conducted thirty years previously as part of the Women, Risk and AIDS Project (WRAP 1988-1990). Each reanimation involved a collaboration between young women, educators and researchers and used creative methods to explore the WRAP data and bring it to life in new ways.
This item contains documentation of sessions with Hideaway youth club in Manchester, run by Ali Ronan with textile artist Seleena Laverne Daye. During the sessions Ali and Saleena worked with young women and youth workers to explore extracts from the WRAP interviews and use these as the basis for having conversations about a range of topics including race, sexuality, gender, sex education, sexual learning, bullying, periods, school, family and other relationships. The group worked with felt to make portraits to capture ideas about being a young woman and their identities.

This item includes:
- Reflective notes on the youth work sessions, activities and planning by Ali Ronan and RAD researcher Ester McGeeney.
- Examples of the felt images created by young women.

HA01/O

2019

Reanimating Data Project, Hideaway

Reanimating Data Project

Research outputs

Creative research methods

Methodology

Local history

Greater Manchester

Political change

Social change

Generation gap

Modern history

Cultural history

Location

Recreational education

Teaching materials

Sex education

Women's movement

Youth work

Youth club

Creative writing

Artistic activities

Group work (Teaching methods)

Educational resources

Visual materials

Family life

Race

Racism

Periods

Text, Image

2019

Greater Manchester

UK

CC BY-NC 4.0

Ester’s notes on the first session at Hideaway youth club on Tuesday 10th September 2019.
I arrived at the youth club at 5pm. My colleague Ali was in the office with two youth workers
taking about the RAD project and the evening session ahead. The conversation was swirling
round different places. I came in halfway through so I wasn’t sure what was going on – it
seemed like we were planning the session, but I couldn’t quite see what the plan was.
Both youth workers are from Greater Manchester. L runs the session and T is another youth
worker. T seemed interested in the project and said that her dad was a miner- she
remembers her dad striking in the 80s and following it all on the telly. Later she told me that
it wasn’t a major hardship for her family because her mum worked so they had money.
We went into the session. It was busy. Some girls were sitting on the sofa area looking at
their phones and chatting. Two others were sitting around the table, one of them was
stripping tissue paper to create gift packaging. She continued to do this for the whole
session. Other girls were on the chairs and one girl was on the computers.
The session had started. I was a bit unclear what was happening so just chatted to the
stripping paper girls. Ali wanted to show the girls the BBC documentary about the 1980s and
so got one of the girls to help her work the TV. Eventually Ali got it playing and tried to talk
to the girls about it. It was difficult as the youth workers didn’t pull the girls into a circle to
introduce us or the project, but rather left us too it. It was quite noisy, so Ali started halfshouting over the top of the noise about the project and the film. I talked a bit to explain
the project. The girls listened but didn’t say much. We had a brief discussion about whether
things have changed for girls in the last 30 years. One girl said that she is freer than her
mum as her mum was a housewife and didn’t have the same opportunities when it comes
to work / careers. The girls also said that they are less free in other ways – there is more
pressure to look a certain way. Freedom is a theme that comes up in other youth club
sessions we have done when we talk to young women about social change.
We started watching the film, but the sound wasn’t very loud. The youth workers were
interested and paused what they were doing to look at the screen. They both recognised
people on the film as some of it was filmed in the local area and commented on this, saying
their names out loud. One of the youth workers (T) talked to me a lot about those times and
the miners’ strike and was clearly interested in the period. This was a 1 on 1 conversation
however that didn’t include any of the young people so eventually I said I had to go as I
wanted to hear what the young people had to say.
I went back to talking to the girls in small groups. Somehow, we got to talking about egg
donation – prompted by one girl who is studying science and was discussing whether we
have the science / technology yet to make fertilised embryos without sperm. This led to me
asking the girls if they would donate an egg to their sisters if their sister couldn’t have a
baby (they all had at least one sister). One girl said no, and this led to a huge confrontation /
discussion that went on for nearly an hour, with new girls joining in the conversation as they
arrived at the youth centre or drifted over to where we were talking. It felt uncomfortable
at times – as if the girls wanted to pick on this one girl, who didn’t seem to be friends with
any of the others. She held her own though – although she became annoyed at times. The

conversations were interesting about who owns an egg and whether an egg is a life or just
an egg. It seemed to me that this would not have been the hot topic in a youth club thirty
years ago.
At some point during the session Ali and I spoke with youth worker T and agreed to try
doing some poetry writing with the girls. Another youth worker had arrived by then – the
mum of one of the girls. She was with us and told us that the girls were a bit tired and all
over the place because it was the first week back at school. Don’t take it personally – she
told me. It was all a bit confused again because the youth worker T thought we were going
to do it using post its and had gone of to find them (and couldn’t in the end) but Ali didn’t
realise that T had gone to do this and thought we had been left to our own devices and
started the activity. As it was so noisy this meant Ali had to half-shout to be heard. Ali
managed to get the girls to write a poem using the sentence starter ‘Girls are…’ . Different
girls contributed different lines. It kind of could have worked but the space wasn’t set up
right. The girls had interesting things to say but it all got a bit lost. Some of the girls sitting
around the sofas didn’t want to take part at all. They were on their phones, making little
videos of them dancing. Another felt tired and was lying on a friends lap under a blanket.
Different girls arrived later and another youth worker did too. The session is very relaxed
with people drifting in and out. All of this felt very familiar from other open access youth
work sessions I work in – chaotic, flowing, uncertain, with little golden moments that
evaporate as fast as they are created. I hadn’t realised that this was how this group
operated though – I had assumed that a ‘girls group’ would involve sitting round in a circle
doing activities together and having discussions, but in fact this a different version of the
‘girls group’ where young women have sole access to the youth centre for the evening to
hang out, eat and take part in activities as they choose.
Eventually Ali and I decided we should go. I tried to suggest to the group lead that she talk
to the girls when we weren’t there to find out what they thought and whether they wanted
to work with us. But she wanted me to talk to them. I went round and told the girls about
the project in mini groups of 2 or 3. They all said that they were up for it. Talking about the
project led to some interesting conversations about sex education. The girls hadn’t had any
at school and reported some of the unhelpful myths and comments from their mothers that
they had learnt. This seemed like a topic they were interested in. Artistically, some were
really interested in performance. Others weren’t.
There’s clearly lots of enthusiasm for debating, discussing and getting involved and lots of
appetite for creative work in this group. It’s going to be tricky to work in an open session
where the girls are doing their own thing though and I’m not sure how we will set up a safe
space or group working environment. This is our challenge – to see what it is possible to do
with the data in this open access youth work space and find out what methods of
engagement are possible.
Ali’s notes on Hideaway session 2 on October 1st 2019.
There is a backstory to this session. On September 10th Ester and I went to the youth
club in Moss Side early to talk through the project and then to try and engage the
young women. Ester and Rachel had signposted the Jeremy Deller documentary and
there were references to Moss Side in the film which I thought might interest the group.
It was a very lively open access session and difficult to engage the young women
although Ester got a good discussion going about reproductive rights. The workers,
who are all local Black women, recognised scenes from the Deller film and were keen
to tell Ester about their memories – this did make us think about how the workers might
see ‘us’ and about white privilege and power.
After the session both Ester and I thought a more creative approach would work better
and I approached Hebe, a maker from the Proud Trust and she put me in touch with
another maker and Black activist, Saleena Laverne Daye whose website was very
inspiring and who agreed to come and work on October 1 st. I went in briefly on 24th to
talk ideas through with the youth workers and we talked about Black History Month
and about creating a wall hanging perhaps.
So having been working at the MMU with Ester and Jayne Mugglestone the day
before, I planned the session starting by using some of the same methods - the jars,
a Who Am I exercise + using short extracts to generate discussion. Seleena was
great, armed with materials and obviously used to working in youth clubs. However
when we arrived, the youth workers seemed almost surprised to see us. Two of the
workers were designing a painting project plus organising cooking and an exercise
class downstairs.

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We did have a dedicated space- and we worked from a table in the centre of the room
and some of the girls recognised me and came over, Saleena put her materials on the
table and I went round to see if anyone else was happy to join us. Four girls came to
join us. All the girls were of Pakistani heritage, and then Z joined us, a 16 yr old Black
girl. We started with the What Jars you about being a girl? activity where each person
has a jar and fills in with all the things that ‘jar’ them. This opened up space for
discussion. Here are some of the young women’s ‘jarrings’:

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We then did the Who am I? exercise and the girls told us their names and birth years
– all 2003/4/6. Lovely stuff on the Who am I? –‘a girl who eats a lot’ ‘an independent
girl’ ‘I am respectful’ ‘I am anxious’ and one ‘I am a daughter, sister, aunty, cousin,
friend, enemy, student.’

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Saleena picked up on some other adjectives ‘courageous,’ ‘brave’ ‘independent’ ‘loyal’
to start encouraging each girl to make a square that represented them and which
would be stitched together. At the same time, we began to look at three extracts from
three different WRAP interviews –MIS09/AMD2255/ MIS09 – and the discussion
began to focus on periods and what the girls had learnt at home or at school. They
talked about how their mothers had explained things once their periods had started, 2
had learnt about periods in Yr 5 and Yr 6. They talked about awkwardness, about
looking for answers on Instagram and through following their favourite YouTubers and
from the lyrics of songs. At this point one of the youth workers joined us and began to

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talk about starting her periods and that her mother told her never to kiss a boy because
she would get pregnant, that led onto a short and fairly superficial discussion about
sex education, more girls joined us and began to stitch little squares. The stitching was
fun and obviously enjoyed by everyone- easy running stitch and lots of colourful
material, felt and colourful thread.

At 7pm we agreed to stop the session. The girls were very positive about the session
and about us returning next week. The youth workers too were encouraging about
how engaged the young women had been and they were happy that we are coming
back.
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Saleena suggested that she will bring some cut out felt next week to start a project of
making portraits. We also talked about cutting up words and phrases from the extracts
and using these in the stitching process. There is a lot more to do about comparing
and contrasting 1989/2019 which Saleena was very interested in. So- watch this
space!

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Ali’s notes on Hideaway session 3 on 11th November 2019.

Yesterday at Hideaway we finally made a breakthrough. This has been a difficult space to work in,
partly because it is an open access youth club for girls and young women with a lot of different
activities going on and partly because I am not sure if we were able to explain to the youth workers
what we were about.

I had had one excellent session there with a group of 6 or 7 young women who came and looked
and joined in as and when they wanted, we started with names and birth year and an outline of
looking at archival material. I had been before a couple of times to try and stimulate some interest
so the young women recognised me. We were also working with a textile artist with a brief to capture
ideas about being a young woman/identities. We used the "jar' exercise which provoked a lot of
discussion about the different constraints on girls and boys, expectations of girls to be caring and
responsible, it also raised questions about education and the sort of sex education that they were
getting at school. The textile work, felt and stitching, started a discussion about representation. The
archival material was looked at but the time ran out.

This time I had decided that we might film the youth workers who had been very vocal in other
sessions about their memories of the late 80s. And I had hoped that by doing this we might be able
to use the workers to carry on reanimating the data. When the film-maker and I arrived, there were
no workers around and we sat in the youth club talking to some of the young women who
remembered us. Then a volunteer worker came and joined us, T, who was 21 in 1989, dual heritage
and had lived mostly in Hulme and Moss Side. She started to reminisce about the Reno club in Moss
Side, her fragile life in the late 80s, sofa surfing and her precarious work life.

Next two of the workers got together a group of young women and brought them to meet with us in
a room downstairs. I had brought a selection of interviews to use with the workers + the Feminist
Webs 'box' with a selection of magazines and artefacts, badges, mugs, from the 80s. The girls were
2x14,15 and 16, L a Middle Eastern Muslim, B and K both Black and A Asian Muslim (with a hijab).
We then sat around a table and introduced ourselves plus our birth years. I had put a selection of
magazines out and we began to look at them, commenting on the ways that people communicate
now and then. I then look at an extract from AMB 18, the part where the interviewee talks about
having a boyfriend of the same background/race. The young women read the extract out and it
sparked a lot of conversation about race. The girls were clear that in their opinion there was very
little racism at school, and that people were not concerned about race. We talked about sex
education and how they learnt about relationships and sex, all in science lessons at school, very
biological approach. They talked about their relationships with their mothers and the fact that all their
mothers were young and therefore easy to confide in.

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I then decided to ask some of the original questions from the interviews and see how the young
women responded. This brought up responses about families, about curfews and about the fear of
the streets and being stabbed.

Sue then interviewed the 3 girls separately encouraging them to think about the differences between
1989 and 2019.

The break thorough happened with one of the youth workers L. The girls were talking about their
hopes and aspirations for the future when L disclosed that her own education had been disrupted
when she was 14 and became pregnant. She talked to the girls about education but they were eager
to go by then and so we began to film L by herself. She was very interested in the archival material
but what this sparked was her sudden vision of using the material to encourage the girls to think
about relationships and their understanding of sex. She said that in her opinion the moral panic of
2019 was the vulnerability and grooming of local girls and young women and that looking at Taught
not Caught and Spare Rib and the Agenda pack was giving her ideas for future work.
We left the interviews and other archival material and L is going to talk to her team of K and T to
suggest how they might work with the material. So let's see what happens next!

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