Week 7: Where I'm At



"Our work is meant to provoke surprise and delight, while driving critical thought and facilitating understanding." – Thorp

"Autoethnography is a way to connect evocative personal narrative to cultural criticism." - Ellis & Bochner



Over the two week study break I have been:

  • Thinking about an 'Equine Experience Narrative' - approaching the issue from the horse's point of view rather than the riders. I am intrigued by the challenge of showing the world through a different lens and making the viewer empathise with an animal. To help explain my approach in my proposal I have been researching about writing/experiencing the world from an animal/non-human perspective. 
  • Researching more theoretical storytelling and empathy readings to expand my knowledge in those areas. 
  • Discovering the term 'autoethnography', which is a research approach that uses the author's/researcher's personal experience to describe and understand a social/cultural phenomena. Finding out about this research method was huge as an essential part of the development of my major project comes from my own experiences, but before now I wasn't sure whether that was something I could draw from. 
  • Keeping up to date with developments in the issue, such as; local UK police departments showing their support of the BHS's 'Dead Slow' campaign and educating their Facebook followers about how to pass horses safely, and a new Facebook campaign in New Zealand that is coordinating large groups horse riders around the country to all set out for a road ride at the same time on the same day (May 20th) to raise awareness for the safety of horse riders on NZ roads. 
  • Looking for ideas and exemplars for my publication idea and making a prototype. BUT I have been wondering if this is actually the best way to reach the audience; would people actually engage with a book? How do I get this book to the people who need to be educated? Non-horse people (the people who need to get the message) definitely wouldn't buy it so it needs to be government funded - could it be sent out to everyone with an NZ drivers license? But what about tourist drivers? Perhaps this is something I could ask my peers and get their help/opinion on at the Whakatinana moment.