I arrived early at the Walnut Street Community Coalition to do some other work and take a call. The cafe was large, and open. It included a book store space, a register with various kinds of gift wrap (including Hanukkah-themed), and a long counter. I noticed prominent tattoos on several employees’ arms.
Very truly, the conspicuously affordable coffee was the first and most significant signal that this was not a typical commercial coffee shop.
The coffee was very cheap for this city, just $1. I took it to a table near the door, not far from where a pair of men were loudly playing speed chess. One of them was speaking in an what I believe was the accent of someone whose first language is Arabic, and seemed to be playing better; the other was talking loudly and sometimes defensively about mistakes he himself was making and speaking in what sounded like a quite anxious way about his desire that the other person be less anxious.
I texted Hannah and Sam that I might be on a call when they arrived, though I ended up being finished (and working on follow-up: slides for a church presentation about digital storytelling the next evening) when they came in. I asked them to go find us a better table while I packed up my stuff. When I joined them, Hannah went to go buy them Thai iced teas while I asked Sam how they were doing.
He started talking about their “wonderful intern” and about past bad experiences with other interns, which Hannah seemed a little confused about. We “talked shop” for a while, about how certain churches in the area are struggling, about our experiences with particular leaders, etc. We focused a lot on a kind of shared suspicion for “professional conference people” whose truly innovative work seemed to happen a long time ago if at all. We contrasted them with people (Hannah: “like Becca Stevens”) who have what I called an “existential humility” about the work. Sam said that they detected that in me, and I said that was mutual.
See note below for a reflection on this apology.
At some point in this part of the conversation it became clear that they had carefully read the draft of my dissertation proposal, which I had shared with them on February 11. I then apologized for making them slog through it, and Sam said they had really enjoyed it and appreciated its clarity and accessibility. There were phrases in passages that had really resonated with him, including the part about me struggling early on to connect with the young people at St. Sebastian’s.
Lambert uses capitalization to distinguish Storycenter’s particular approach while acknowledging the need for flexibility among members of a movement .
Eventually I gave them a pitch for what I’d been thinking to follow up on the proposal, based on what I had been putting into my draft IRB paperwork (“ethics paperwork,” I always call it): going on mentor team outings, then convening a traditional Digital Storytelling workshop for youth over the summer, then maybe expanding that offering to mentors in the fall.
They indirectly and supportively told me they were concerned about the connecting with the young people part (“it’s taken years for many of our mentors”), and we played with some other ideas. The idea of doing the storytelling activities with mentors team(s), likely first in a pilot with one team and over consecutive weeks by necessity, bubbled to the top. Sam expressed more openness to the idea that we might be able to do a youth-only event if the two of them were present.
We decided I would move forward with the proposal of an approach that both took place within teams and focused on those teams (that is, a chance for teams to tell the story of their experience together—which, after all, was where I’d had the breakthrough with the St. Stephen’s participants), first with one or two volunteer groups and then possibly as a larger “snapshot workshop” (a Storycenter term for a shorter one-day event for creating stories built around a single image) sometime on a Saturday. We identified as a possible template for such stories this post on the Tapestry Instagram, featuring Team R’s #TapestryMoment reflecting on the experience of waiting with Reggie while he was up in a tree:
We also talked a lot about the idea of me being more involved in the Foster Youth Experience media projects. They have an accurate understanding (I check in with them at one point) of where my media expertise is and isn’t. My enthusiasm for “conversations with artifacts” as a meaning-making activity is interesting to them. We both shared that we are interested in this being a long-term partnership, which I broached in saying we didn’t have to do every possible configuration of storytelling for the purposes of the dissertation. I told them about the possibility of this being part of a research portfolio I would bring to a possible future faculty position at a local seminary, and they said they would be interested in our continuing partnership whether or not I got such a position.
I have struggled throughout the project to name a few traits I have observed that do not fit very neatly onto Tapestry’s four guiding principles but nevertheless seem connected to their faith values. This is an example of one I have decided to code as communion. See “Interpretive insights” below.
Eventually we realized we needed to get next door to the Walnut Street Restaurant for the evening’s main event, Tapestry’s first mentor gathering and thank-you dinner. The restaurant has a slightly outdated elegance, with carpeted floors, muted pastel color schemes, and glass or plexiglass table separators. I learn that it’s a nonprofit restaurant, and that the Walnut Street Community Coalition is a “residential association providing self-help support to people rebuilding lives.”
We talked for a while by the door, and the first mentor arrived. We did some introductions and eventually moved to the table. It had chairs for perhaps a dozen folks, and I checked in with Sam and Hannah about how they wanted to sit and where I should go to support that. I ended up across from Sam and diagonal across the table from the first mentor to come in. Others arrived, and I struck up conversations at various times.
I spoke with the volunteer who runs Tapestry’s Cards for Hope program, a retired media industry accountant who was seated to my left. I spoke with Derek, a hospital chaplain and ordained deacon who serves as facilitator for Team R and was seated diagonally to my left. I spoke with mentor Yesenia seated on my right, a long-serving mentor from Team Z whom I would get to know quite well despite her departure before I began my intensive work with them [tracings link—I think I should use the inline timeline creator for “Tracings” entries under Analyses, linking in each case to the relevant post but tagging them with the generic Tracings color].
We talked about different places in the country people had lived. We talked about people’s impressions of the area, partly in response to the fact that I was new. Some people asked about my work, and it was clear that people were a little confused about someone being present who didn’t fit neatly into the co-directors / mentors / facilitators / youth structure of Tapestry. At one point I asked Yesenia who her youth was, and when she told me she looked around and brought her voice way down before she told me, though eventually she started talking about the team’s experiences quite animatedly and then asking who my youth was.
I noticed some small awkwardnesses of the kind that often happen when you get a group together like this for a quasi-social gathering with members and leaders of an organization, particularly when the members don’t know each other especially well. For example, while Hannah and Sam were very clear that Tapestry was paying for the meal, there was no similarly communicated stated policy about alcohol. Over the course of ordering, I did hear Hannah say to one individual that Tapestry would buy the first drink, and sometime during ordering that precedent seemed to take hold and several of the drink orders switched from water to wine or beer.
During the brief time toward the end of the evening when the co-directors convened the whole group for a quick large-group thank-you and to prompt introductions, I identified myself as a researcher as we went around the table. I didn’t notice anyone registering that in a surprised way, though several people had in our individual conversations. People made informal arrangements about leaving as the meal wound down. Sam said he and Hannah had missed the last ferry and that “someone” would pick them up from a train station stop, so they’d ride with one of the mentors until then. Lots of people ordered ride shares on their phones. I found the nearest bike share and headed home in a gentle but still unpleasant rain.
Data collection
- Field notes?: Yes
- Audio recording?: No
- Photographs?: No
Significant observations
- I noticed that the “shop talk” bonding moments between the co-directors and myself had a character of griping to them. This trend would continue in many of our subsequent meetings in a way I believe is related to all our identity negotiations around this work and its relationship to traditional church.
Interpretive insights
- When I asked Yesenia who her youth was, her body language and temporary vocal shift gave me the strong impression that I had broken a rule about referring to the names of youth—at least in public, but possibly even with each other. Although the notes from my first mentor training don’t contain any references to this guideline, it was definitely included at the training at which I would later make audio recordings. As the study proceeded, I would make note of a number of creative communal practices adult participants employ to protect the identities of youth participants.
- The choice to hold their first thank-you dinner at Walnut Street Restaurant is a good example of Tapestry’s curatorial care about where and how they convene. Businesses and other vendors they frequent or partner with tend to be locally owned and mission-driven. Food, which often plays a central role, tends to be healthy but attractive—and attractively presented [link to photo]. In short, the organization is very attentive to the symbolic significance of their material and aesthetic choices. I chose communion as the appropriate guiding principle to code in these instances because of the sacramental connection between signified and signifier , the element of community connection and mutuality the choices highlight, and the frequent food connection—which latter Hannah addressed quite explicitly in a later conversation [tracings link to later coffee shop convo?].
Implications / reflections
- My apology about “making” Sam and Hannah read my proposal draft helped me see that I wear my researcher hat much like Sam wears his religious leader hat: a bit self-consciously, perhaps over-concerned that others will have a negative reaction. [tracings link to recording from October training?]
References
Image credit: “The café portion of Atticus” by Aaron Gustafson via Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0). For illustration only—not a research artifact.