Untold stories of volunteering: a cultural animation project

该项目旨在通过采用文化动画方法来探索志愿服务的潜台词，以确保这些故事从设计/剧本到与志愿者本人一起制作和表演，一直到制作和表演。志愿服务被联合政府誉为“大社会”的一个重要组成部分。人们记忆犹新的是2012年伦敦奥运会，这一事件突显了志愿者所发挥的关键作用。尽管有这些成功的故事，但批评者指出，志愿服务仍然是少数人的活动(见Mycock和Tonge，2011)。例如，根据政府的年度公民调查(Whitehead，2011)计算，2011年(欧洲志愿服务年)只有39%的成年人参加了某种形式的志愿服务，这是自2001年以来的最低水平。此外，有人认为，政府和机构对志愿服务的论述并不总是考虑到基层志愿服务的经历。相反，它们的前提是，社区中有无限的善意蓄水池，可以鼓励人们更多地志愿服务。还有一种感觉是，志愿服务正在被推广，作为一种促进社会再平衡的手段，不再依赖国家，并作为一种降低福利服务提供和公共支出成本的方式(Seddon，2007；Rosol，2012)。我们认为，政府的话语没有公正地对待志愿服务的各种形式，以及志愿服务所涉及的动机、做法和情感关系。此外，志愿服务的替代话语似乎很少出现，关于志愿服务的官方话语往往会忽视、边缘化或忽视来自底层的声音。在这个项目中，我们通过与三种类型的志愿者接触来捕捉这些声音：志愿者、乐器志愿者和来自特伦特河畔斯托克地区的志愿者(被迫做志愿者的人)。特伦特河畔斯托克是一个贫困地区，它严重依赖志愿者来支持其许多经济、社会和文化活动。我们将与志愿者、社区组织和政策制定者密切合作，共同开发一种方法，通过这种方法，志愿服务的不为人知的故事将在地方和国家层面上被听到。我们在文化动画技术的帮助下做到这一点。在文化上赋予社区活力包括承认和批判性地接近现有的权力和知识等级，并采取措施尽量减少它们，以此作为一种手段，发展更具解释性、更少立法的方法来理解社区并与社区合作(Phillips，1998a；1998b；2002)。这个项目将以跨学科的方式构建，学者们及其合作伙伴将在共同创作、共同设计和共同制作的构成要素上共同努力。第一阶段的主要成果将是开发一种方法，详细说明团队将在第二阶段共同制作和共同交付一部关于志愿者不为人知的故事的纪录片。我们(志愿者、学者和政策制定者)都将在这部纪录片中扮演演员。我们的目标是在英国至少三个不同的地方联合制作这部纪录片。每场演出结束后，将有一个问答环节，以评估演出与观众自己的志愿体验是否产生共鸣的程度。我们的社区合作伙伴New Vic Borderline在纪录片剧场拥有20多年的经验，是许多国家奖项的获得者。

This project aims to explore unspoken stories of volunteering by employing a cultural animation approach to ensure that such stories are co-produced from design/scripting through to production and performance with and by the volunteers themselves. Volunteering has been heralded by the Coalition Government as a key ingredient of the Big Society. Vivid in people's memory remains the London Olympics 2012, an event which has highlighted the crucial role played by volunteers. Despite such success stories, critics point to the fact that volunteering remains a minority activity (see Mycock and Tonge, 2011). It has, for example, been calculated that only 39 per cent of adults took part in some form of volunteering in 2011 (The European Volunteering Year), the lowest level since 2001, according to the Government's annual Citizenship Survey (Whitehead, 2011). Also, it has been argued that governmental and institutional discourses of volunteering do not always account for grass roots experiences of volunteering. Rather they are premised on the assumption that there is an unlimited reservoir of goodwill in communities and people can be encouraged to volunteer more. There is also a sense that volunteering is being promoted as a means to promote a rebalancing of society away from the state and as a way of reducing the cost of welfare service provision and public spending (Seddon, 2007; Rosol, 2012). Governmental discourses, we argue, fail to do justice to the diverse forms of volunteering and the motives, practices and affective relations involved in volunteering. Furthermore, there appears to be few avenues for alternative discourses of volunteering to emerge, with official discourses of volunteering tending to neglect, marginalise or overlook voices coming from below. In this project, we capture such voices by engaging with three types of volunteers: voluntary volunteers, instrumental volunteers, and voluntolds (people who are forced to volunteer) from the Stoke-on-Trent area. Stoke-on-Trent is a deprived area which relies heavily on volunteers to support many of its economic, social and cultural activities.Working closely with volunteers, community organisations and policy makers we will co-develop a methodology by which the untold stories of volunteering will be heard at both local and national level. We do so with the help of cultural animation techniques. Culturally animating a community involves acknowledging and critically approaching existing power and knowledge hierarchies and taking steps to minimise them, as a means to developing more interpretative and less legislative approaches to understanding and working with communities (Phillips, 1998a; 1998b; 2002). This project will be constructed in a trans-disciplinary manner, with academics and their collaborating partners working together across its constituent elements of co-creation, co-design and co-production.The main outcome of Phase 1 will be the development of a methodology detailing the stages and processes by which the team will co-produce and co-deliver a documentary drama on the untold stories of volunteering in Phase 2. We (volunteers, academics and policy makers) will all be actors in the documentary drama. We aim to co-deliver the documentary drama in at least three different localities across the UK. After each show, there will be a question and answer session to assess the degree to which the performance resonated or not with the audience's own experiences of volunteering. Our community partner, New Vic Borderlines, has over 20 years experience in documentary theatre and is the holder of many national awards.