Untold stories of volunteering: a cultural animation project

该项目旨在探索志愿服务中未言明的故事，采用文化动画的方法，确保这些故事从设计/脚本到制作和表演都是与志愿人员共同制作的，并由志愿人员自己制作。联合政府已经宣布，这是大社会的一个关键组成部分。人们对2012年伦敦奥运会记忆犹新，这一事件突出了志愿者所发挥的关键作用。尽管有这些成功的故事，但批评人士指出，志愿服务仍然是少数人的活动（见Mycock和通格，2011年）。例如，据计算，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，根据政府的年度公民调查，这是2001年以来的最低水平（Whitehead，2011年）。此外，有人认为，政府和机构对志愿工作的论述并不总是考虑到基层的志愿工作经验。相反，它们是基于这样一种假设，即社区中有无限的善意，可以鼓励人们更多地从事志愿工作。还有一种感觉是，志愿服务正被作为一种手段加以推广，以促进社会摆脱国家的平衡，并作为一种减少福利服务提供和公共支出成本的方式（Seddon，2007年; Rosol，2012年）。我们认为，政府的话语，未能做到公正的志愿服务和志愿服务的动机，做法和情感关系的各种形式。此外，志愿服务的替代话语出现的途径似乎很少，志愿服务的官方话语往往忽视，边缘化或忽视来自下层的声音。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样的声音：自愿志愿者，工具志愿者和来自特伦特河畔斯托克地区的志愿者（被迫志愿者）。特伦特河畔斯托克是一个贫困地区，在很大程度上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，在地方和国家层面上听到不为人知的志愿服务故事。我们这样做的帮助下，文化动画技术。从文化上激励一个社区，包括承认和批判性地对待现有的权力和知识等级，并采取措施尽量减少这些等级，以此作为一种手段，制定更多的解释性和更少的立法办法来理解社区和与社区合作（菲利普斯，1998 a; 1998 b; 2002）。该项目将以跨学科的方式构建，学术界及其合作伙伴将在共同创作、共同设计和共同制作等组成要素上共同努力。第一阶段的主要成果将是制定一种方法，详细说明团队将在第二阶段共同制作和共同提供一部关于志愿服务不为人知的故事的纪录片的阶段和过程。我们（志愿者、学者和决策者）都将成为这部纪录片的演员。我们的目标是在英国至少三个不同的地方共同提供纪录片。每场演出结束后，将有一个问答环节，以评估表演与观众自己的志愿服务经历产生共鸣的程度。我们的社区合作伙伴新维克边界，在纪录片戏剧方面有超过20年的经验，是许多国家奖项的保持器持有者。

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.