How to intervene?

Still we are on our way of coming to terms with the field. After having done empirical walk as described in the section context_evaluation, you have to start your personal intervention by talking to the people.

You will ask people you meet in the streets, in shops, at public places. A good question in order to get a wide range of information in the beginning of your adventure is the question concerning the future of this field: “If you think about the future of this place, what comes to your mind?” This very general question opens room for fears but also for positive feelings. With the help of this question you get a lot of important information about everyday-life - but also about the important figures, the stakeholders and their milieus. Depending on the place where you meet the people and on their time available, you can start a longer conversation. After having done this we will begin to develope half structured interviews by analysing the empirical walk and the street-interviews along these questions:

• What are the main topics?
• What is no topic at all?
• Persons, groups, institutions. who plays a role? who does not?
• What is typical?
• What attracts?

The first image we got:……………….

After the analysis of initial findings you focus on some topics that you (or your group) consider as being relevant for democratic change. You can ask either people you meet in public places, or people whose names have been mentioned in conversations before.

In order to get a more powerful insight into the field it is useful to work with groups. You can work with a simple method, well known as brainstorming, e.g. with pupils in their classroom. They could imagine the condition of their community in 35 years future, for example. Older people might be able to tell jokes and histories about the community which are very relevant to understand the becoming of this area. Another wonderful tool are moviescripts. You split the group in sub-groups and you ask them to write, draw or put into scene a moviescript on the area they are living in. This script does not only mention the hot spots, it also dramatises them, so you can get a wonderful insight into the social and communicative dynamics. Examples from my work in Austria:

• a group of senior citizens in a protestant church were telling stories about the becoming of their community
• a group of social disadvanted people in the office of the probation officer
• a group of women who are participating in a project for supporting the female labour market
• art-class of a high school
• youth-club (video-spots)

It is important to have a good documentation of all the work at hand, because we will then make our next step: sorting our experiences and inventing a diagnosis.

• introduction
• context_evaluation
• interventions
• attitude
• experiences
• reflections