I got a quite busy July, so that I could hardly keep my research log updated in the last month. After the holiday trip, I went back to Wenzhou on July 13th and punctually started the 2-week Drinks for Stories program as planned. With a small site in the holiday hotel and a pile of invitation cards, the interviews with Wenzhou residents began.

The Initial Stage

Most things went smoothly in the first three days, during which I conducted conversations with 8 people. In contrast to previous concerns, it was not hard to find people: When I built the connection with my interviewees, they tended to recommend someone else who they thought to be a good storyteller.

Simultaneously, I did not physically confine myself in my base. I tried to move around in the hotel (e.g. next to the outdoor swimming pool where some parents stayed to take care of their children) or drove to different places (e.g. the ceramic museum, coffee house) for site visits and interviews.

The Tutorial

The process was still accompanied with some questions, which I shared during the tutorial on July 16th:

• How can I become more neutral?

I found that I had different levels of preference toward different interviewees. Even though I could control my behavior during the interview, I was not sure that I could treat all the data equally afterwards.

The tutor’s suggestion, based on my understanding, was to be less worried about this problem. The function of these interviews should be the base of the archive, so that more people will present their interest in this project and output their stories or opinions. Whether I like or not, different viewpoints will be included in the archive in the future eventually.

• How to persuade people to tell their own stories and experiences, rather than just sharing the knowledge or theories they know?

Some people, identifying themselves not that well-educated or with science and engineering background, just felt that they were not capable of talking about this topic. The tutor recommended me to try something differently: try to ask different questions for best responses and try to use different ways to collect data rather than interviews, for example, to place some paper for hotel guests to leave their stories.

Besides, I was suggested to buy the domain to generate the online archive in July in advance, which could help me to share more about my project with my interviewees. However, I felt I had been overloaded and could hardly achieve this T-T.

Adjustment and Practice

Since I was not staying in the hotel everyday, placing some blank paper for leaving notes might be a good way to collect more data.

Therefore, I attempted to reorganize the site when I was not there (with the blank paper, archivist information collection cards and the participant consent forms), and asked the help from the colleagues in the coffee bar to trade free drinks for the filled blank paper.

However, rather than stories, this setting attracted more children to doodle on the information collection cards, which might also be an unexpected good element for the archive construction…

In addition, I experimented on asking different questions to my participants. Even though it was hard to set a fixed question list applicable to everyone, I found starting with the question “Can you introduce your job(s)” was a good way to get people’s life stories. The topic would not be restricted in work, but naturally flowed to early school years, families, hobbies and even attitude toward lives.

Difficulty in the Late Stage

My first target was to collect the data from 40-50 people, but the actual number was 32. Gradually, I felt this intense interview period consumed too much of my mental energy, probably because of two reasons.

First, I underestimated the time consumed for each interview. It cost approximately one hour for each interviewee in real practice, which was twice as much as I expected. Second, I overestimated my capacity in having many long conversations with different people as an introvert.

As the result, I slowed down my pace in conducting the interviews in the second half of the period, which allowed myself to have some breaks by “sightseeing” in my hometown and taking some photos as supplements to the archive.

Before going back to China, the development of the project seemed to work in a utopian way. I just imagined everything and revised my project based on the research, the dragon dens, the tutorials…

Even though all the information I got in the past few months was quite useful, the real situations are much more complicated than my presumptions: They indeed gave me more opportunities in stretching out my project, but simultaneously forced me to make selections of the most valuable things and conduct a better time management.

I got a week to stay in Wenzhou, during which I visited the hotel and communicated with the manager about my demands. He suggested the best spot for the event, a semi-closed space in the hotel for sipping tea as well as selling peripheral products. At the same time, it happened that he was preparing for the site visit to some local inheritors of intangible cultural heritage and make guides for hotel guests for sightseeing. I could take the chance to cooperate with him to help produce the tour guides as well as collect more data in enriching the archive.

I also talked about my project to my friends, parents, cousins… and got really good feedback from them. One of their friends, their colleagues, or their old classmates… might be engaging in something related to my project. However, I just felt busy in listening possible opportunities and happy to embrace them, but hard to organize my time in tackling all of them.

And as David told in the unit1 tutorial, planning the timetable for the project is necessary, because I have to consider the time to take a break, to meet friends, to travel around. I was just accustomed to the simple life in London and forgot the complex social network in China: a large amount of time was required in socializing… I found the necessity in adapting myself to such a hustling life as well as finding the pure space and time in researching…

In the past week, my main focus was to collect fragments of inspirations for…

How to trigger deep conversations?

My aim is to build an ideal framework to trigger the deep and informative conversations with my future guests. What possible topics or activities can I put to elaborately curate the event? There are some related things or actions with regard to this question.

Recalling Drawing your river of life Event

Three years ago, I participated in a community in Shanghai called YesGo which aimed at building the social network as well as encouraging people to explore the self. One of the event taking place at that time was called Drawing your river of life, which encouraged community members to draw own life graphs and share the life stories within the group in 10-20 minutes. Everyone became talkative. I am trying to examine whether it is applicable in ‘Drinks for Stories’ event.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

After the tutorial on this Monday, I got some time to chat with Ziff and discuss about my first intervention. He suggested me to learn about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy applied in psychotherapeutic treatment. Time allowed for self-reflection might be useful in leading to better talks.

And I am going to meet my dear teammates from MA CCC in last unit tonight to get more knowledge about curations!

How to produce interesting stuff?

Even though it might not be a wise decision to confirm the final output in this stage, I still feel the necessity to speculate the outcome a little bit, because it extrapolates backwards to what kind of data I need to collect, and in which way.

Sophie Calle

I enrolled in UAL short course of Photography one month ago. In this Tuesday’s session, we were introduced the artist Sophie Calle who devoted her work to detect stranger’s private lives and created personal profiles of whom she investigated in exhibitions through grouping a set of frames together. I am planning to take references of her ways of art expression in archive building.

Sophie Calle @ Art Institute of Chicago

Her

I watched the film Her on last Sunday night and was really impressed by its aesthetics. Personally, the most interesting setting is Theodore’s work PC, which looks quite like an artefact with his professionally composed letters on the screen. Such a visual language makes the world depicting the future digital era more humanistic. It might be good if I can build the online archive in this way.

I felt the necessity of writing my project plan in Chinese to make myself easier in communication, as well as to present my project to my stakeholders in a clear and understandable way. Therefore, I wrote my bilingual project plan : )))

ArchiWenzhou Project Plan

项目策划书

项目简介 Introduction

ArchiWenzhou将以一场为期15天的“以酒换故事”活动为起点，通过邀请度假酒店的住店客人们每晚来到酒吧屋，就温州一系列有趣的文化议题分享他们的故事，观点和建议，从而成为文化档案库的共创者。

ArchiWenzhou will begin with a 15-day Drinks for Stories program, inviting resort guests to come to the bar house each night to share their stories, ideas and suggestions on a range of interesting cultural issues in Wenzhou, and become co-creators of a cultural archive.

“以酒换故事”活动将于2024年七月中旬至七月底在温州永嘉悦庭楠社设计师酒店开展，并在得到参与者许可的基础上，以绘画，照片，视频，音频等不同的形式进行记录。活动发起人将在八月进一步地整合信息，搭建共创的文化档案库并向大众展示。希望在这个探索城市文化意义的过程中，每一个温州人都能找到自己与这座城市独特的联结。

Drinks for Stories will take place from mid-July to the late July 2024 at the Yueting Nanshe Designer Hotel in Yongjia, Wenzhou. With the permission of the participants, data will be documented in the form of paintings, photographs, videos, and audios. In August, the initiators of the event will further consolidate the information and build a cultural archive of the co-creation and present it to the public. The aim is to trigger citizens’ sense of participation in the exploration of the city’s cultural significance, and to encourage everyone to find their own connections with the city. 

关于“我” About Me

Hi，我是歌恬！现在是一名应用与想象专业的学生。在这门课程中，导师们鼓励我们对自己感兴趣的未知领域不停地探索，并在实践中对其产生更加深刻的理解。

Hi! This is Getian, a postgraduate student from the course MA Applied Imagination at Central Saint Martins. In this course, we are encouraged to keep exploring the unknown areas we are interested in and to develop a deeper understanding of them through actions and practice.

作为一个在温州出生的孩子，我在温州度过了12年的童年时光，上初中时便和家人一起搬到了其他城市。春天籀园的三叶草，车站烫手的灯盏糕，朔门街的格子铺……小时候的视觉，听觉，嗅觉，触觉，慢慢凝结成了记忆碎片，在成长的过程中渐渐地不再被大脑调拨。

As a child born in Wenzhou, I spent 12 years of my childhood in this city and moved to Shanghai with my family in middle school. The clover in the spring Zhou Garden, the hot lantern cake stall next to the bus station, the groceries at Shuomen Street …… the sight, the hearing, the smell and the touch in the childhood slowly condensed into the fragments of memory, and were no longer rewired after growing up.

12岁后对温州的感受被局限在了寒暑假短暂的返乡，大学毕业后更是只有每年过年的短短一周。从高铁三小时回家，到喝上喜茶，再到在印象城里逛街吃饭唱K，每次回来都会特别惊喜地感慨：“真好啊！温州现在和大城市一样方便！”

Since then, the feeling of Wenzhou was confined to the short returns during the summer and winter holidays, and even to less than a week per year after graduating from university. From the opening of the high-speed railway, to buying a cup of HEYTEA, and then shopping in the mega-mall, every time I come back will be particularly surprised to lament: “It’s so great that Wenzhou is now as convenient as the big cities!”

但我却渐渐失去了感知温州独特一面的能力。打开小红书或大众点评，吃喝玩乐应有尽有。但是我更好奇的，是听听温州人的故事，聊聊千年百年或十年前的历史，和今天藏匿在我们脑中的好见地。

However, I gradually lost the ability to perceive the uniqueness of Wenzhou. When opening social media, everything about cuisine and entertainment could be easily found. But my real interest is to listen to the stories of Wenzhou people, talk about hundreds and thousands of years of history, and the good insights hidden in our minds today.

关于“档案库” About Archive

在利物浦大学研究员Les Roberts的研究论述中，档案无所不在，既可以作为实体存在，也可以是数字化的。对于作为在线平台的微信或抖音来说，我们每天都在不知不觉中参与着它们的存档过程。而另一边，作为实体存在的城市也可以被视作一座巨大的档案馆，因为城市景观正以各种方式承载着近代的考古痕迹，包括涂鸦、纪念碑、历史建筑和景点标志……

As is discussed in the research of Les Roberts from the University of Liverpool, archive is omnipresent and can be both physical or digital. While Youtube and Spotify are working as online platforms which we are all engaging in their everyday archiving process, a city can also be described as an archive because “urban landscapes bear the archaeological traces of the recent past in any number of ways, such as, graffiti; monuments; historic buildings; site-seeing markers…”

这意味着，我们的城市文化和记录它的各式档案一直存在着，却在我们日复一日的讨生活中，习以为常的景色中变得渺小。这一次，不妨一起想想我们的童年古早味，我们的温州话，我们的生意经，我们的山河湖海，说出你最深刻的记忆。

This means that the cultural significance of our city has always been existing, but are hidden in the scenery we take for granted in daily lives. This time, how about recalling our childhood flavors, our Wenzhou dialect, our business, our landscaping, and speaking out our deepest memories?

我们都可以是这座城市的档案员。

We can all be the archivists of this city.

“以酒换故事”活动框架 Framework for Drinks for Stories

活动地点 Location

温州永嘉悦庭楠社设计师酒店-户外酒吧屋

Yueting Nanshe Designer Hotel, Yongjia, Wenzhou – Outdoor Bar House

活动时间 Time

7月13日至7月27日，每晚7:00-10:00

7:00-10:00 p.m., From 13 July to 27 July

拟邀对象 Participants

悦庭楠社设计师酒店住店温州本地客人

Hotel guests from Wenzhou City

邀请方式 Method of Invitation

在酒店客房中放置邀请函及饮品兑换券，吸引客人前往酒吧屋参与活动，成为共创档案员

Place event invitation card and cocktail voucher in every guest room to attract the participation

每晚预计参与人数及时长 Estimated number of participants per night and length of time

3-5人，每人30-60分钟

3-5 people, 30-60 minutes each

活动流程 Process

• 提供参与研究同意书获取许可并收集参与者基本信息
• 邀请客人绘制生命长河，回忆自己在温州经历的人生故事，并分享其中自己最喜欢的1-2个故事
• 进入自由讨论环节，邀请参与者就温州方言，饮食，古迹，商业文化，文旅等诸多议题，提供自己的看法以及建议（自由讨论框架需要进一步和专家商议后确定）
• 邀请客人为自己设计档案员形象，生成ID及像素化头像，用于日后的网站搭建及相关周边制作
• Provide the consent form to participants and collect basic information
• Invite participants to draw their river of life, recall their life stories in Wenzhou, and share 1-2 of their favorite stories
• Enter into a free discussion session to invite participants to provide their views and suggestions on Wenzhou dialect, food, monuments, business culture, tourism and other topics (the framework of the free discussion needs to be further checked with the experts)
• Invite guests to design their own archivist image, generate IDs and pixelated avatars to be used for future website construction and related peripheral production

信息采集方式 Information Collection Methods

纸质（参与研究同意书，生命长河，档案员形象生成书），音频，视频，照片

Paper (consent form, river of life diagrams, archivist image generation), Audio, Video, Photographs

项目日程规划 Project Calendar Planning

初步设计（6月1日至6月17日）

Preliminary design (1 June-17 June)

• 初步搭建“以酒换故事”活动内容框架，并基于此完成文化档案库网站的逻辑架构
• 完成活动视觉主题设计草稿，以运用于网站，邀请函，兑换券等平台及物料中
• Initially set up the content framework of Drinks for Stories
• complete the logical structure of the cultural archive website based on the framework
• Complete the draft visual design for the event to be used on the website, invitations, vouchers and other platforms and materials

先导试验及设计定稿（6月18日至6月28日）

Pilot testing and design finalization (18 June-28 June)

• 踩点活动现场
• 确定活动饮品单及活动人力
• 通过家庭成员的帮助，完成活动先导试验，改善“以酒换故事”活动内容框架
• 建立与温州文化相关专家的沟通，以获取建议，改善“以酒换故事”活动内容框架
• 定稿“以酒换故事”活动内容框架以及视觉主题设计
• Check the event location
• Determine the drink list and manpower for the event
• Complete a pilot test of the event with the help of family members to improve the framework of the event
• Build contact with experts in Wenzhou culture to obtain suggestions to improve the framework of the event
• Finalize the framework and visual design for the event

物料准备（6月29日至7月10日）

Material preparation (29 June-10 July)

• 完成同意书，邀请函，兑换券，活动展架等物料打样及生产
• 完成相关物料的采购和租赁，包括饮品原料，夏季用品（驱蚊，降暑），活动材料（纸，笔，视频和音频记录设备，三脚架等）
• 完成网站框架搭建和视觉设计
• Finish the Sampling and production of materials including consent forms, invitations, vouchers, event displays, etc.
• Complete the procurement and rental of related materials including beverage ingredients, summer supplies (mosquito repellent, summer heat), event materials (paper, pens, video and audio recording equipment, tripods, etc.).
• Completion of website framework and visual design

二次先导试验（7月11日至7月12日）

Second pilot test (11 July-12 July)

• 进行二次先导试验
• Conduct second pilot test

开展活动（7月13日至7月27日）

Conduct of activities (13 July-27 July)

• 基于定稿的活动内容框架，于酒店进行“以酒换故事”活动
• Based on the finalized framework for the event, conduct the event in the hotel

数据分析及后续内容收集（7月28日至8月20日）

Data analysis and follow-up content collection (28 July-20 August)

• 将活动中收集的所有参与者提供的信息进行分析，整理和编汇
• 若有参与者在活动后有意提供额外的内容，将在此阶段进行进一步的联系
• 编汇的内容将陆续在网站上线
• Analyze, collate and compile all the information provided by the participants collected during the event
• If some participants wish to provide additional content after the event, they will be contacted further at this stage
• The compiled content will be made available on the website

My Research Question

My research question experienced a long evolutionary process in the past month: from the focus on the young workers to graduates of arts and humanities, and to cities’ arts and humanities projects. Finally, I submitted my draft with the question as below:

How can small manufacture-based cities explore their opportunities in the development of arts and humanities projects? — a case study of Wenzhou city in China

After finalizing the question on last Tuesday, I presented it twice in two different places and got the feedback a bit differently.

The first was in the language class during which I shared my draft proposal to the language tutor and the classmate. Since they have already got my basic ideas before and looked at the content in the written form, it seemed to be more understandable for them in terms of my research question.

However, within the new tutorial on this Monday, when I orally presented my research question to the new tutorial group, it seemed not clear enough to be understood and I got the suggestion of changing the way of expression from the new tutor.

It should be a good point to reflect on. The evolutionary process has probably led to my fixed mindset in choices of the words influenced by the previously generated question. However, the exposure to the new audience helped me jump out of my existing logic and consider how to express my current focuses in a more appropriate way.

Currently, the latest version of my question:

How can small manufacture-based cities explore their own cultural significance? — a case study of Wenzhou city in China

My Methodology

The previous tutor found our unclarity in describing the part for “how” and provided a useful tool called Research Onion Model to help identify our methodologies.

Here are some links:

Analysis of Saunders Research Onion

https://gradcoach.com/saunders-research-onion/

Based on the model, I attempted to figure out my choices and preferences in terms of the six layers.

Layer1 – Research Philosophy: Pragmatism

Layer2 – Research Approach: Both Inductive and deductive (I should refer to the successful practices in cultural construction of cities as well as generate something new) / Qualitative research preferred (but I am not sure whether my intervention should be defined as qualitative, quantitative, or both)

Layer3 – Research Strategy: Action research

Layer4 – Choices of Method: Maybe mixed method (1 qualitative + 1 quantitative)

Layer5 – Time Horizon: Hopefully longitudinal research, but it might be limited by the time (since we only have 5 months left) and energy (longitudinal research is usually applied by teams, so it is better to look for my co-workers if I want to be longitudinal)

Layer6 – Techniques & Procedures: I intended to create an online community which might be defined as a mass archive to invite citizens to participate in the construction of cultural database of Wenzhou city as well as devise the ways to promote the community

Such a model is quite helpful in revealing my missing points as well as checking the feasibility of my methodology.

My Positionality

On Tuesday’s class, the discussion on our positionality as a researcher made me generate some questions towards myself:

What’s my background and position? Am I an insider or outsider?

Wenzhou is my hometown. I moved from Wenzhou to Shanghai with the family when I was 12. After that, I generally visit my hometown once or twice a year with no more than one week at a time. With the vanity of living in the big city and my social network which was built mostly in Shanghai in the past 15 years, I tended to view myself as a new Shanghainese.

However, partly influenced by my parents, I gradually sensed my nostalgia toward Wenzhou as I grew up, and I even found recently that my comfort food is actually flavored in Wenzhou style…

Based on that, I viewed myself as both insider and outsider.

What is my relationship with my stakeholders?

They are residents of the city I concern about.

They share with me the pride and affection toward the city.

They are intelligent people who might provide constructive ideas.

They might be beneficiaries of growing cultural market and economy.

How will my positionality affect the process of community building？

Being both an insider and an outsider, I might pay more attention in guiding participants to focus on the distinctiveness of cultural assets in Wenzhou.

There is an another experience about myself which drives my extra attention to uniqueness. I used to work as a visual merchandiser for several years, which allowed me to travel between many small cities in China. Conducting a short city walk, visiting regional museums, flea markets or vintage shops and tasting local street food gradually became my routines during the very limited leisure time apart from the work, from which I could get a glimpse of the most interesting parts of those cities.

How wonderful if these parts could be discussed more often by the public!

Proceeding with the Project Three

In project three, I initially investigated my question “How can our clothing trigger communications internally or externally” by inviting my friends to take part in a small experiment. I asked them to randomly create their comparison group for items they liked and disliked in clothing to trigger some interesting events or conversations. 

The results were not rewarding enough because changing a single item in outfit was too trivial. However, when reviewing the feedback collecting from friends again recently, I found most of them stated their feelings they grasped in workday scenarios: office, commute, lunch break… Also taking into account of experiences in unit 2, I realized the considerable amount of time people invest in their work, which means young people’s outfits are serving for their working time in many cases.

Simultaneously, I struggled with the problem that how to narrow down my focus at that time and told Jasminka my difficulty. One of the suggestions she gave was to combine another area I was interested with the current topic to test if something new could be generate. It led me to look again at my box of uncertainties, from which I identified mental health as my second consideration.

Driven by the things above, I decided to investigate on the intersection of workplace, clothing, and wellbeing. I was curious how people choose to wear in their workplace.

Workplace, Clothing, and Wellbeing

In my first job, I used to experience a few uncomfortable moments of being judged by senior colleagues on my outfits or heard some unfriendly comments on other people’s clothing in gossip time. However, when I jumped to the second company, the new work environment was more tolerant and embraced various styles of dressing. There were only praises of outfits between colleagues rather than criticism. Such a positive atmosphere eventually made me confident and stayed focused on work itself rather than worried about being criticized in terms of clothing etiquette.

Besides, I have also heard some outfit-related complaints from my friends in their work. For example, a friend working in a state-owned enterprise shared her dissatisfaction that the strict dress code made her have to spend extra money on the clothes she disliked to deal with office scenarios.

In the past ten years, there has been some legal cases dealing with the unreasonable dress code people met in the workplace. For example, a women in the UK who was fired because of her rejection to wear high heels initiated an online petition which attracted 152,420 signatures to appeal to illegality for a company to require women to wear high heels at work (UK Government and Parliament, 2016). And in the thriving social media app “Red Book” in China, a considerable number of Generation Z youngsters are talking about the invisible workplace bully they are suffering from because of their clothing.

To get a more comprehensive understanding, I read the Psychology of Fashion (Mair, 2018), which introduces the world of fashion in relation to human behavior, from how clothing can affect our cognitive processes to the way retail environments manipulate consumer behavior. Among all the information Mair provided, I paid attention to her detailed exposition of enclothed cognition and her demonstration on the relationship between clothing, self, and identity.

Enclothed cognition is defined as the systematic influence that beliefs about clothing have on the wearer’s psychological processes dependent on the co-occurrence of the symbolic meaning and the physical experience of wearing the clothes. Through experiments with white lab coats, Adam and Galinsky (2012) demonstrated the profound effect clothing can have on people’s cognitions.

For clothing’s relation with self and identity, as is elaborated by Mair, since what we wear is an outward display of our self and our identity, we cannot separate clothing from these two concepts. While we choose to identify with those whom we perceive as like-minded, who look like ourselves, who have a similar level of attractiveness and who dress similarly, we also have the need to feel unique, to differentiate ourselves from others. In workplace, similarly, when people are looking for the conformity among colleagues, they sometimes slightly break established norms to stand out from the group.

In addition, I kept in mind one of reading materials which introduced Google’s Project Aristotle (Duhigg, 2016) in unit 2. At the end of the article, Duhigg concluded that “no one wants to put on a ‘work face’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘psychologically safe’.” In my understanding, If clothing functions as people’s display of self and identity, wearing comfortably in the office will also lead to workers’ psychologically safe condition.

Based on the information above, I tried to draw a mind map to construct the link between workplace, clothing, and wellbeing. 

Struggling with the Direction to Focus on

When I attempted to envisage the story to narrative and questioned myself what my target was about the clothing in workplace, I at the first place got stuck. Therefore, I shifted my focus on people’s whole day activities on weekdays.

In the post-Covid world, commutes gradually come back as our routine on weekdays. As is raised by Bailey and Cohen (2021), commutes help us separate our home and work identities, set healthy boundaries between them, and avoid burnout. However, Chatterjee et al. (2020) pointed out that the subjective experience of transport, including how it contributes to overall happiness, warrants policy action and research through their evidence review. These opinions directed me to the possibility of investigating on people’s decisions and troubles encountered on weekday outfits considering their quality of commutes.

People generally invest their time at home, in workplace and in commuting on weekdays. However, there might be more occasions when we tend to conduct extra activities to improve ourselves or just for relaxation, but we currently have limitations in satisfying ourselves with the most suitable clothing facing different scenarios.

Based on such an analysis, I tended to collect voices from workers about weekday clothing and activities. However, when I shared my thoughts on Monday tutorial session on April 8^th, I found there was still an ambiguity in clarifying my way of narration and how it served to my stakeholders. After the discussion among the group, I reorganized all the ideas I have developed and found my real concern was still about people’s constraints of real self in workplace rather than providing convenience for people to make transitions between work and life.

How Office Dress Code Constrains People’s Real “Self”

As a result, I took a step back to the workplace scenario and to focus on the intersection of clothing, workplace, and wellbeing, which I think appropriate to be categorized as public discourse. 

Through conducting interviews with young workers and research on the industry and workplace they are in, my aim is to investigate on stories about young workers’ conformity to dress code, to understand their situation and help voice it out.

Reference List

Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (4), pp. 918– 925.

Bailey, J. R. and Cohen, A. (2021), That “Dreaded” Commute Is Actually Good for Your Health. Available at: https://hbr.org/2021/05/that-dreaded-commute-is-actually-good-for-your-health (Accessed: 6 April 2024).

Chatterjee, K. et al. (2020) ‘Commuting and wellbeing: a critical overview of the literature with implications for policy and future research’, Transport Reviews, 40(1), pp. 5–34. doi: 10.1080/01441647.2019.1649317.

Duhigg, C. (2016) What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html (Accessed: 6 April 2024).

Mair, C. (2018) The Psychology of Fashion, London: Routledge.

UK Government and Parliament. (2016) Make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work. Available at: https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/129823 (Accessed: 14 April 2024)

For the current stuck situation we encountered, I attempted to review and write down what we have went with in the past month:

Personally, what we have missed is to investigate and analyze more about our process of store visit and interview with Renz. Simultaneously, when I reviewed the word cloud we set during the incubator, some key words actually called back to the questions and problems we found through conversations with tutors and peers:

Based on things above, I’d like to suggest three points for improvement in the final presentation:

1- To answer “How we get there”, we can testify the statement “Future is already here” with evidence from our interview with Renz and extra research (as what we have done some in our group Slack during this weekend).

2- It might be better to be less strong in our statement about Union Jack. Change the manner of speaking to express mildly that we are here to give a new choice rather than recommend by all means.

3- Since personally I did not think our ideology has inclination for “White” and “Man”, perhaps what we should do is only to slightly change our wording and image for “Jack” to make it more neutral and universal.

With the incubators for testing on Thursday, this week seems to be crucial to our final presentation. I am not exaggerating but feel like my mood is on a roller coaster everyday because of all unexpected issues…

On Wednesday afternoon when I just planned to go with some reading for the final report, I found it hard to even read one line. Instead I documented some feelings in the past few days:

I was always trying to figure out what everyone in the group was thinking about. How Omar linked our theme with a union or a party? Why Nicky thought AI was highly relevant to our work? Why Chuxuan paid extra attention to our uses of different media (newspaper/poster/etc.) as artifacts?

We all have different cultural and educational background, and even though we almost stayed together everyday in the previous month, our different tasks within the group and sources of information are still different. Anyway, I hold the belief that the guarantee of adequate communication are the best solutions to reach an agreement.

But what happened on Wednesday in class indeed made me confused and depressed, with my mind wandering to things about collaboration.

I recalled the first week when I raised my discontent with hierarchical or pyramid structure which is ubiquitous in workplace and we showed our consensus on de-centralization. This week, however, I just realized the modes of de-centralization which is ubiquitous on campus are also imperfect, in lower efficiency of making decisions, in higher possibility of arousing debates.

Also I have to say it is regretful that we are still unable to get a clear arrangement for this unit even in the week 9. The collaboration in this unit, I believe, should not only exist within each group, but between all MACCC&MAAI students and staff.

For incubators on Thursday, as expected, we still need to elaborate our theme by ourselves to get precious insights from others, rather than just leaving our artifacts in the corner simply with a poll or anything interactive. My suggestion for the future is to stop the game of musical chairs and allow conversations to go deeper.

I consequently got some useful advice from peers:

• We should build our narratives for Jack or Union Jack: just defining them as  a group of people being multi-disciplined or versatile is still too vague (how will a Jack be like as a full-time worker / a freelancer / a slasher, give scenarios to make this ideology easier to be understood).
• Be cautious about the wording / image building. Take into account the gender (Union Jack and the image we build seem to have a tendency of masculinity).
• We should try to think how to use this ideology as a tool to tackle the current existing problem (for example, not only full-time workers in the workplace, but housework which is not paid).
• Everyone will love it, but what is the current problem? Think more about it.

Today, during the online tutorial session with Josh, we exchanged what we got from yesterday and found each one of us actually delivered differently about Union Jack. Still, communication matters. Our group is obviously in a low morale, with all the factors intertwining.

Hope this weekend can be a good remedy to our mood, to let us calm down and think more positively. Let me spray my cyber-lavender-mist to pillows of my dear teammates!

After developing our endless thoughts in miro respectively during the first half of the week, we inevitably invested a large amount of time making agreement on directions on Thursday.

I felt it necessary to ensure that each team member could fully understand what we are talking about, so that everyone can actually make contributions. Personally, the most difficult part was not about compromising with dissenting views, but getting clear of how the whole logic was developed.

To avoid being too idealistic, we decided to both propagate our ideology of “Jack” while emphasizing all practical problems currently hard to be fixed. We haven’t figure out how groups of problem should be, but probably we can follow up the method of raising questions introduced in Elizabeth’s workshop. 

Friday is my routine “gap day”. I visited Tate Modern and unexpectedly inspired by a “Gutai” artwork. Piercing the surface layer to reveal the underneath, the artist Shimamoto formed a contrast between “delicate paintwork and violent holes in its surface” to “reflect the disruption of Japanese culture” during 1950s. The setting of multiple layers and holes, from my perspective, might serve for our narrative of past, present, and future. I’d like to share it with my team next week.

We breezed through our visit to Leica Store London Mayfair last Sunday and conducted a 3-hour quality conversation with Renz, the assistant store manager, about his work and life. The conversation was quite informative that I have to listen to the record again and digest it during weekdays.

Generally we discussed on a wide range of topics: photographic history and tech, Leica customers and product sales, Renz’s personal career trajectory, working in Leica and store Mayfair, AI and currently problems…

Personally here are some points impressive or beneficial:

Agency in Using Tech

As appreciated by Renz, the utilization of automation in cameras indeed helps improve the images (e.g. autofocus, noise removal, shaper images, etc.), and sometimes post-process with AI can effectively turn waste to treasure. However, the excessive pursuit of high-tech applied in photography might lead to a result that “camera is taking pictures, not me”. Since two years ago when I initially started the use of M-system in photography, even though it took longer time to adapt myself to fully manual mode, I felt I could control better over the camera rather than allowing the machine to capture the best images based on its built-in algorithms.

Maybe we should deliberate more in using tech to prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by it.

Dying Art of Repair

The higher productivity leads to our habit of disposing damaged items easily and buying new ones with fair price. Sometimes repairing seems to be more costly than replacing.

This topic also reminded me what Elizabeth introduced in the first-time tutorial: nowadays tons of digital wastes (laptops, smartphones…) are piling up on a daily basis. People tend to buy a new MacBook just because the old one’s memory is full.

Renz mentioned that products of Leica were produced aiming at sustainability. Say, they can be passed through by generations, and Leica’s customer care center in London is also trying to improve customers’ experience in shortening the repair time of cameras.

I am not sure if it is worth propagandizing the resurgence of the art of repair, but I’d like to invest time in pondering on its value.

Life-Long Jack

I mentioned in Monday’s tutorial that I was quite moved by Renz’s views on his pursuit as a photographer. The full-time job as a manager and the duty to take care of his kids after work deprive of his time and energy to developing himself in photography. However, he felt currently it is good enough for him to capture his kids’ growth through cameras. Being a professional photographer could be scheduled later in his life.

Back to our key idea of “Jack of all trades”, Renz’s statement helped us to view Jack as a more flexible image. Realistic limitations inevitably prevent someone of being a Jack. While feeling excited at our utopian future scenario, we should consider the dilemma/problems at the same time and to be more positive, attempt to find solutions.