The Observers Observed: 'Reflections on making a film, The Day War Broke Out, with the Mass Observation Archive' by three PhD researchers

Elizabeth Chappell, Simon King and Dominique Baron-Bonarjee made a film, The Day War Broke Out, in the summer of 2019 as part of a CHASE film making training course led by film-maker Karen Boswall at The University of Sussex. The film focuses on the way in which the Mass Observation (MO) Archive came about. The film brings to life the materiality of the archive through voice, music, hand-written letters, historical objects and setting as well as through an interview with one of Mass Observation’s curators, Kirsty Pattrick. But what can we understand from the stated intentions of MO’s founders for anonymous volunteer contributors to write diaries ‘so that their [the public’s] environment may be understood and thus constantly transformed.’? This article takes the view that the ‘single voice’, i.e. in this case the personal reflective narrative, can offer a ‘way in’ to understanding collective lived experience. Exploring the research questions through three case studies, it offers a dialogical approach to the parallel and overlapping questions of how past lived experience can be brought to life on film as well as how researchers can use materiality to access the context of lived experience. It asks, how does the creative exploration of the archive through film offer the possibility of a more open dialogue to occur between researchers and curators? And finally, how can film making open up new vistas and avenues for researchers to share findings as well as to transform their own field of research?

A nurse academic's lived experience with COVID-19: a reflective narrative

COVID-19 is incomparable in terms of its impact and reach across the globe. Every corner of the world has been affected by this virus in one way or another. The impact of COVID-19 poses an existential and physical threat to us all. This reflective narrative discusses my own experience having caught the virus and examines the impact that living with the disease has had and continues to have on my life. Battling distressing symptoms, and having had to face this life-threatening illness, evoked fear and panic within me, despite my usual level-headed, calm and easy-going personality. I ruminated whether I would be among the statistics of those who eventually recover from the disease or those who sadly do not. Therein was my mental anguish and self-torment; and I very much doubt if I am alone in this.

Reflective narratives during the Covid-19 pandemic: an outlet for medical students in uncertain times

Reflective narratives on personal experiences, observations, thoughts and concerns were used as a method of helping medical students process the Covid-19 pandemic and their lives. This involved individual writing, anonymous submission, on-line group reading of selected narratives on a voluntary basis and facilitated discussions. Students felt that this was a safe method to voice their feelings and thoughts, to understand themselves better and to gain new perspectives. Though small numbers of students participated, there appears to be a greater potential to use reflective narrative writing coupled with facilitated group discussions in medical education to help students cope with external and internal stress, to better understand themselves, to relate to others and possibly to become more empathic.

Introducing reflective narrative for first-year medical students to promote empathy as an integral part of physiology curriculum

Guided reflective narratives facilitate deeper understanding and learning. The study was aimed at exploring the scope of guided reflective narratives on early clinical exposure, for first-year medical students, in promoting empathy. Strengths and limitations of the process of reflective narratives were also explored. First-year medical students ( n = 150) were exposed to guided reflective narrative writing following each of the three “early clinical exposure” sessions integrated into a physiology curriculum. A feedback on the entire program was obtained through a semistructured questionnaire. The contents of the reflective narratives and feedback on the program were analyzed. Students empathized with the situation and needs of patients and caregivers and could relate to responsibilities and challenges faced by members of health care team. They realized the importance of cooperation from patients and caregivers and work efficiency, communication, behavior, and teamwork from members of healthcare and thereby emerged with the idea of the coordinated effort in patient care. Students opined that reflective narratives made them reflect and empathize with people and situations. Too many narrative writing sessions and hesitation to share their thoughts were some of the suggested limitations. The process led to emergence of a working model for guided reflections to promote empathy. Guided reflective narratives made students reflect and relate to people and situations. While promoting empathy, the reflections also gave them an idea of holistic approach to patient-centered care. Inferences led to a conceptual model for guided reflections to promote empathy among medical students.

Seven Late Twentieth-Century Lives: the Mass Observation Project and Life Writing

From its revival in 1981, the Mass Observation Project has collected life writing. In response to open ended questionnaires (‘directives’), MO correspondents send in what often amount to fragments of autobiography. While this material has been explored by researchers ‘horizontally’, to discuss attitudes and behaviour in relation to the themes raised by particular directives, my book Seven Lives from Mass Observation is the first attempt to use the material ‘vertically’, assembling the fragments of autobiography contributed by some individual writers who continued to respond over two or three decades. In an earlier book, Nine Wartime Lives, I used MO's original wartime diaries (and directive responses) to write biographical essays exploring a set of common themes, derived from the mature historiography of the period, from the contrasting perspectives of nine very different observers who had all participated as active citizens in public life. This article describes the very different challenges and insights posed by the use of the more recent MOP material. The longer time frame, and less developed historiography, demanded toleration of initial confusion in the research process before the key theme of a contrast between the 1960s and 1980s emerged. The reflective narrative of MOP's autobiographical fragments (different from the immediacy of the MO wartime diaries) shaped the sample chosen: a single older generational cohort, born between the two world wars, responding to the 1960s and the 1980s as adults formed by earlier experiences. Writing intimate biographies of living people, guaranteed anonymity when they first volunteered for MOP, required developing a set of ethical protocols in conjunction with the MO Trustees.

Bird and Line

"Bird and Line" is an artistic inquiry into the relationship between a deep state of artistic consciousness and the act of drawing a line to arrive at the form of a bird. This inquiry further proposes that by using line as a mode of research, the artist begins to perceive the consciousness of a bird and the relationship it shares with its form. For me, the embodied and porous experiences of watching and knowing birds through the practice of working with "line" as an artistic element allow for an intimacy of experiencing and an unfolding of intersubjectivity. Artistic inquiry also acts as an investigation into self-awareness and self-realization in this space of making eco-art. These acts of being lead me into reflections on how perception and creativity are melded together during creative moments to allow for a porous consciousness to emerge and perform the act of drawing a bird. As an artist working with text, movement, and image, I embed questions on the ethics of creativity into how we evolve our lines of art, as well as encounter other beings. By unraveling the relationship between the inner and the outer through Indian aesthetic philosophy, I evolve methods for eco-art practice using line as an element. I emphasize the importance of artistic research with a framework of Indian aesthetics as a way of deepening our perception and relationships with the natural world. This article is written to make artistic processes visible through a reflective auto-ethnographic approach. I write in a non-linear reflective narrative to comprehend cultural ontologies that drive my practice, unfolding internal thought processes, directions of research, and moments of mystical experience.

The Adaption of Self-Reflexivity and Metafiction Approach to Myth and History in Shashi Tharoor's the Great Indian Novel: A Post-Modernist Study

Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel is an example of a post-modern historiographic metafiction that takes the relationship between reality and fiction into consideration. This novel also depicts the 20th century political past by reviving events, incidents and characters of the myth of Mahabharata. The current paper aims to explain how Tharoor rebuilds the twentieth-century past by drawing on the great Mahabharata classical epic. Additionally, it examines the common relationship between fiction and history as it progressed along and continuous processes through the use of self-reflexivity and metafiction approach. In The Great Indian Novel, Tharoor adapts a metafiction tool which is the most fitting way to tackle this novel as a postmodernist study. Tharoor blends fiction and fact through a self-reflective narrative and the use of several metafiction devices by adapting the myth of Mahabharata to construct the distance between the past and the present. Tharoor takes the ancient myth as the basic structure with contemporary group of political characters for a real and ironic review of recent Indian history and representation.