Although I would not yet apply for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for my research for many months, and I wouldn’t start taking long-form field notes until my next engagement, I nevertheless think of my participation in this holiday party in late 2018 as the beginning of my formal ethnographic presence with Tapestry.
This event was where I began to hang out with a true eye toward understanding Tapestry and not just, as it were, familiarizing myself enough to cultivate a potential research-practice partnership. That I was attending the organization’s second consecutive full network gathering (again: full invite, albeit not full participation from all teams) added to the sense of formality, as did the fact that I recorded a voice memo with a significant observation and some associated speculation after the event concluded.
The pizza from a popular local chain, which is often present at Tapestry events, turns out to be “the best pizza” in Team Z’s story. That’s not what I first thought they meant, given the story’s lengthy description of Zoe’s excellent homemade pizza.
The party took place mainly in the gym at Stillwater Children’s Center. One or two long collapsable tables in the hallway that leads from the gym to the central lobby held the pizza, salad, and other food. Inside the gym there were round tables set up, and either on these tables or on a separate one (I don’t remember which) were beautifully composed cookie decoration kits.
I sat at a table with Reggie, (Deacon) Derek (Team R’s facilitator), Liam (Team R mentor, Hannah’s husband), and I think also Marie (Team R mentor). I decorated cookies, listened to the conversation, and engaged youth and adults when opportunities presented themselves. I remember speaking briefly with Liam, though I don’t remember about what (I think more “new to the area” stuff). Mostly I noticed—and I think largely misinterpreted—a relational dynamic that seemed to be happening at my table and elsewhere (see below). I remember recognizing Zoe from the previous gathering, though I can’t remember the context (was she at our table? a nearby table?).
I believe that, at some point, a few of the youth started playing basketball at a hoop well away from the tables, once they started to finish their cookies. I am not entirely sure I’m remembering this right. I may be confusing the memory with the 2019 holiday party, where I definitely observed a team asking for permission to go to the gym (the party was in the conference room) to play basketball.
I remember feeling a bit conflicted about how early I left. See reflections below.
Data collection
- Field notes?: No
- Audio recording?: Yes (voice memo)
- Photographs?: No
Read annotated voice memo transcript.
Significant observations
- As the memo expresses, my chief observation while participating in the cookie decorating was that there was much more conversation among adults during the cookie decorating than between adults and youth.
Interpretive insights
- At the time, I thought of the youth/adult conversational dynamic as a problem: a missed opportunity resulting from (selfish?) adult distraction. This interpretation is cringe-inducing now. I now see the phenomenon as a kind of low-key invitation for the youth to engage (or not)—both in the conversation adults were having with each other and/or with other youth. Moreover, the youth get significant attention from mentors every week. I would later observe and understand that All Tapestry events are a place for the mentors to connect with each other, share experiences and ideas, troubleshoot dynamics and their own emotional responses to the work, etc.
Implications / reflections
- In the language of my primary field of study and practice (religious education), I would say that a significant purpose of Tapestry is forming the mentors—as human beings grounded in relationship, as reflective souls making meaning about the challenging life circumstances they encounter.
- Regarding my mixed feelings about leaving before the event was over: One thing I know about myself is that I have an over-active sense of responsibility. If there’s something I think I can do, I think I should do it. During my pastoral training as a hospital chaplain, this tendency led me to stay longer than necessary in my sessions with patients. My mentors helped me develop a lens of “role / goal / context”—what is (and isn’t) my job in this relationship, what am I trying to accomplish in this encounter, and how do our surroundings and past experiences together shape the present? Over the course of my time with Tapestry, I would come to better understand that my role was not to become a mentor or even “mentor lite,” that my goals for particular engagements might need to be quite small or distributed over many sessions, and that certain kinds of engagements were good for some purposes and not for others. I believe All Tapestry events are great for certain research and production tasks, which were either not accessible to me that day or which I had exhausted already:
- observing how and the extent to which the youth do (and don’t) relate to each other;
- observing how teams as teams handle disruption and being nudged out of their collective comfort zones / habits of belonging;
- observing how mentors from different groups supported each other (see above); and
- doing some low-key bonding with mentors and youth I already had some relationship with.
Image credit: “Cookie Decorating Party” by Hey Paul Studios via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). For illustration only—not a research artifact.