Making space for visual-material methods: reflections on work with organisations and in local authority partnerships.

If you follow me on Twitter, or read this blog, you may know I am a researcher who develops visual-material methods (involving actions such as making, viewing and handling), to support review, reflection and planning. You’d think this is a pretty fun job, and it is, but if done well, it’s also challenging, humbling, and it requires lots of learning on my part. In this post, I thought it would be useful to record some of that learning, as the success of my work with others depends on it. There are lessons, perhaps not just for me, about developing innovative methods to support collaboration and creating the environment to do that successfully.

Some context is useful. As a researcher, I am concerned with supporting learning and change in professional practice and collaboration that benefits children, especially in English local authorities. I have worked in local government, and also have developed a specialism around the development and used of visual and material methods in research and higher education. I have spent lots of time listening to and coaching managers in local government children’s services (and beyond), and this has only made me more passionate about supporting their vital work.

I’ve had time to think about the value of innovation in local authority children’s services -  but I’ll be honest: in this field, as with most others, the label, “innovation” can be a highly irritating and useless word. Like “modernisation” or “partnership working” it can mean many things to many people, including poorly thought through, if fashionable, initiatives we could all do without. It’s not the first idea I introduce into a conversation with managers in Children’s Services. However, I argue there is a case for innovation in public services. Before I reflect on developing tools that involve visual-material methods (the detailed stuff I do), I’ll set out the case I’ve made for innovation in local authority children’s services, and will reflect a little on creating the conditions or culture for developing new approaches. I have found that you can’t do one thing without the other.

The challenge of addressing complex issues

Local authorities have an unenviable job when it comes to leading and organising change for children and families. Of course this applies to individuals’ practice, but I focus here on organisation and in particular cross-organisation work with partners in the community, voluntary, health and private sectors. I won’t rehearse the ways in which the roles, powers, mechanisms and resources of local authorities have changed over the last forty years or so, except to say that  much of contemporary work of local authorities is done with others, across sometimes informal and blurred organisational boundaries. At a strategic level, the objects of that work - like reducing child obesity, identifying early language delay, or reducing teenage pregnancy are affected by many variables in a complex and changing situation. In policy terminology, such issues are “wicked”. Wicked problems, as originally described by Churchman (1967), are those that are complex, interdependent, and that have no ‘easy’ solution. Forget any simple ideas of implementing a single ‘solution’ through a single organisation to a single population in a linear way.

Of course, despite complex and changing times, there are some types of tasks that benefit from established methods. These tend to be on the end of a spectrum to do with information gathering, auditing or consultation. For these things (although they are not often straightforward), local authorities work regularly with organisations to do things like ‘map’ services. On the sort of imaginary axis proposed by Stacey (2002), the less agreement and certainty that exists about a solution, the more likely that factors like judgement and political consideration come into play. Hence the need to move beyond information gathering, towards more sensitive and adaptive tools.

Towards meaningful and effective tools

Lots of my development, coaching or research work has been in such a zone. Whether working with looked after young people talking about mental health services, partnerships working with families of disabled children, groups of senior managers or evaluating wellbeing initiatives in schools, these situations share common challenges, despite (often) very different contexts. In my experience, they have all required things like:

• A methodology that allows meaningful ownership and participation.

• The ability to work with lots of different ‘types’ of information in one space, including emotional and embodied material.

• Easy and purposeful interaction between participants.

For me, work with visual-material methods provides an ideal practice through which to work on these things. Through trial, error and study, I have come to see some of what they offer (their ‘affordances’). Here are some themes:

• Visual-material ‘things’ can be artefacts; more than decoration, they can be used as tools to act on us and be used by us to achieve things.

• Visual-material artefacts can have a permanence that is useful in many ways. They act as ‘place markers’, helping us to remember, relate and deal with complexity.

• Visual-material things can bring diverse sets of ‘things’ into a single space in the way that the conventional linear structure of narrative cannot. We appreciate new things and ask new questions when we encounter such collections or assemblages.

Given my previous list, these big themes need to be embodied by methods that feel simple, empower and recognise expertise in participants, are inclusive and hit the right balance between totally prescriptive templates for activity and scary ‘blank sheet of paper’ high stakes activities. There is no easy way round ticking these boxes: I refine, talk and reflect a lot with partners in the process of development.

Nurturing the right conditions for innovation in local authority led activity

Most of my work on innovative tools (visual-material methods, in my case) happens well before the actual implementation. This is bad news for those who want to rush to the methods, and skip constructing an understanding and readiness for new approaches. In my context - the high stakes world of safeguarding, supporting and educating children and young people, this must be handled with thought. Changing "how we do things" is a universally tricky challenge, and in my work, local authority partnerships can operate outside of formal terms of reference, organisational commitments, budgets and roles. Making things work as they are now seems hard enough, with limited resources, never mind going through the pain of change. Making a practical case for change is needed, alongside the development of new tools that embody new approaches.

I have found that concepts can really help he. If introduced pragmatically, concepts can help create a shared ‘space’ for the agreement of principles, and conversations about what those concepts can look like if put into practice. I say ‘done right’, because I have to keep any mention of concepts tied to practical benefit - and have learnt that this can be tricky for time-pressed and ‘initiative’ weary managers. On the plus side, there are some great resources that help us think about systems and how a given ‘situation’ has come about. For example, Activity Theory (e.g. Daniels et al., 2005) is one framework I have used to consider that:

• Issues are best understood at the level of the activity system they are connected to.

• Phenomena or issues evolve over time through the interaction of parts of the activity system.

• Learning comes from understanding contradictions within an activity system.

For me, this is hard work, and easy to misjudge. I have spent lots of time developing tools at the expense of understanding the context in which they will be used and stumbled at times. Thankfully, I am learning orientated, and I find it helpful to be transparent about mis-steps with those who I encourage transparency and honesty from. It’s not always a bad thing. We like to read about ‘innovative’ methods (I know I do), including the sort of visual-material methods I develop, but often the majority of the work is done getting to the point where diverse groups, with different agendas and shared histories choose to try something new. In my case, it involves putting children, young people and parents ‘in the middle’ and understanding resistance, frustration and questions from professional partners as an opportunity to make space for new methods.


References

Churchman, C.W. (1967) Wicked Problems, Management Science, Vol. 14 (4).

Daniels, H., Edwards, A., Engeström, Y., Gallagher, T. and Ludvigsen, S.R. (Eds.) Activity Theory in Practice: Promoting learning across boundaries and agencies, London: Routledge.

Stacey, R.D. (2002) Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity. (3rd Ed.) Harlow: Prentice Hall.