Lynn Howarth's blog

Film complete - feedback good

Lynn Howarth — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 07:32:52 +0000

The final version of our film has been really well-received by the people who have seen it so far. I think the direct personal accounts from our trans participants really brought it to life and made it more effective.

The final version is six minutes long, which is longer than we originally intended but it seemed like the minimum length we could get away to include what we feel we needed to. We thought it would be a shame to have to lose any of it, and anyway six minutes is still short enough that it can easily be incorporated into meetings/staff training etc without people getting bored. We followed a general pattern which we hope people feel flows logically, where we state some facts and figures, talk about what kinds of things go wrong, then what people have got right and end with the what recommendations can be drawn from all this; some very simple guidance for what to do and what not to do when dealing with trans people.

One of the questions I received at the conference in Newcastle the other week was along the lines of "okay that's all very well but how do we actually go about carrying out the recommendations" which is a good point. Well, first of all there is a little bit more detail in the executive summary than appears in the recommendations at the end of the film, but I think to a large extent this is a topic for future research. Further research could take a similar qualitative, interview approach to explore, for example, what would make a trans person feel that they were "actively welcomed" at a particular location or institution.

Film nearly complete - audio sounds great in my humble opinion :-)

Lynn Howarth — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:25:58 +0000

Two of our project participants met up with the film maker at the start of last week, as planned, and all the audio for the film was recorded and a few changes to the running order made to improve the "flow". I think it sounds great and gets across the main points very well. It seems like everyone else is pleased too. Just some remaining work to be done in relation to music and imagery and we are all done in terms of the film.

Ready to start recording

Lynn Howarth — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:53:22 +0000

We've now got a full, final script for the film ready, and our interviewers and interviewees are coming in to do voiceover work with the filmmaker tomorrow morning!

Ready to start recording

Lynn Howarth — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:53:17 +0000

We've now got a full, final script for the film ready, and our interviewers and interviewees are coming in to do voiceover work with the filmmaker tomorrow morning!

Film taking shape

Lynn Howarth — Wed, 21 May 2014 07:54:44 +0000

We're now at the stage where we've put together a basic plan of what we want our final product (three minute film) to look like. We've provisionally called it "Dealing with transgender people: getting it right". It's now in the hands of the "professionals" who have begun to create the actual film. Hoping for some updates from them soon and the chance to look at how its coming along.

Film taking shape

Lynn Howarth — Wed, 21 May 2014 07:54:40 +0000

Presenting our findings

Lynn Howarth — Thu, 08 May 2014 18:41:43 +0000

Our group has got together a couple of times in the past few weeks to agree on main themes and the quotes that best illustrate them. We identify lack of knowledge of transgender issues, well-meaning attempts to help that don't work, issues of how to be addressed (pronouns and titles), inadequate procedures, or failures to stick to them, and isolation and harassment as major themes. The good news is that many good experiences were reported too, and things seem to be getting better the more time that goes by, according to those interviewees with a long history of dealing with transgender issues. We are now busy working on a 3-4 minute film that will hopefully illustrate the issues, and suggest some solutions, in an entertaining and informative way.

All interviewing and transcription done - some interesting themes found

Lynn Howarth — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 23:17:35 +0000

All our interviewing is now done and interviews have been transcribed. Some interesting themes have emerged. Our little group has got together and discussed what commonalities there are across our interviews and what recommendations arise from these. Final meeting to address these issues will take place next Tuesday and the interviewers will also suggest their ideas for how the findings may be effectively presented in the form of a short film.

Developing our interview script and starting interviewing - February update

Lynn Howarth — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 11:38:07 +0000

Our group of four interviewers got together and had a meeting about what interview questions should be. We all thought about it before the meeting and came with a list of questions and discussed what we had to come up with a definitive list of what should be included. Not unexpectedly many of our questions were similar or the same. We also decided on an appropriate start and end script for the interview. I sent the list of questions to all interviewers after our session and they were all happy with how it looked. During our meeting we also discussed whether we needed to use video or just go for audio recorded and decided that for the time being at least we are just going to use audio.

We had to decide how we were going to record and store the data, and obviously we had to have some extensive discussions about data security. The Council have just bought some new Android tablets so I provided each interviewer with one of these as we thought these would work well for recording, and we had a go doing some recording during the session and the sound quality was adequate although not amazing. I don't really think this is a problem as we will not be using interviewees' own voices anyway - they will be digitally altered or re-recorded by someone else, for reasons of anonymity.

All of the interviewees had at least one person in mind who they can interview, to start off with, and have now started interviewing. I have also been in touch with another organisation in Blackpool, the Richmond Fellowship, who are likely to be able to put us in touch with further potential interviewees.

I am going to be starting transcribing the interviews this week.

Timeline and January Update

Lynn Howarth — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 19:21:28 +0000

Below is the enclosed timeline for our project, where we are getting transgender learners to interview other transgender individuals about their experiences in education or generally, in order that we can better improve services in adult learning and elsewhere.

We have been out and about publicising the project widely, and have recruited four transgender learners to do the interviewing. They have undertaken basic retraining and we've had some conversation about the logistics of how we're going to manage the project (recruiting interviewees, doing the recordings, etc). Training and went well and all four learners were enthusiastic and keen to get started, and interested in the basic research teaching. They were really interested in how to ask the questions in the "right" way, and we had a good discussion on the question of anonymity - how to ensure it and why it's important. They came up with some great ideas. Between now and next week they are each working on using the principles we learned in our training session, and their own experiences, to come up with a list of possible questions for the interviews. Next week we are going to get together and get all our ideas for interview questions looked at and decide which to questions to include. In the same session we shall decide on our interview "start script" and "end script" and so we shall have our interview schedule ready. I am looking to pick up some tablet computers on Monday for them to do the recording on and then we'll be good to go - they can start interviewing next week.