Continuing on the gendered dialogue theme: at the beach today (yes, apologies, still on holiday) my children befriended some other children and built a dam in some rock pools at high/ebbing tide. They got on great and had a brilliant time. But I also overheard an innocent conversation between my 4yo and one of the other girls (about 5yo): “Are you a boy or girl?” Girl. “Why are you wearing boys clothes?” They’re my swimming costume “Oh OK”
They carried on playing.
I recognise these gender constructs are increasingly of interest at this age and clothes become gendered. I asked my 4yo about it.
Why do you think she was confused about your swimming costume?
She thought it was a boys costume because it was blue.
Hers was blue though?
Yes.
That’s strange. Blue is a colour for everybody. Mummy wears blue. You wear blue. Blue is a nice colour. She likes blue as well?
Yes.
We can all like and wear blue it’s just a colour.
I don’t mean to brag, but we’re on holiday.
The inlaws have come to stay with us for a few days and are on book reading duty for the kids as per their demands. My eldest picks up this book.
What an excellent choice I thought, silently proud my 6yo is interested in it.
“That’s not a boy’s book!”
Err.. it definitely is for all boys and girls.
“Where’s the ‘Great Men Who Changed the World’ version?
On every library and book shop shelf in the world. Books like this are necessary to offset the massive gender bias that *still* exists in our history, our literature and our arts.
I’m the favourite daughter in law because I’m the only daughter in law ?
I’m on holiday and doing my best not to ‘work’ whatever boundaries of ‘work’ and ‘non work’ there may be. I bought The Woman Who Walked Into Doors from Whitby Oxfam and am half way through now, at the time of writing. It’s a heatwave. My 6yo noted his favourite stories are the Rover ones by the same author Roddy Doyle. What’s the story about mummy? I’m not sure yet but I think Roddy is telling the story about the main character’s life. I’m finding out about the character – the person in the story.
I’ve finished a weekend full of talking to people about mental wellbeing and I’m exhausted! It was a really great and enriching experiencing but hard work constantly talking and listening. I got some great interviews for Dwell Time and met some fantastic and inspirational people, as well as met up with friends and family. I’m ready for a holiday now and have packed just two books for holiday reading this time.
I’ve got one more show to install: Cap Stories at Elland Library tomorrow morning and a couple of funding applications to complete then I’m off on a week’s holiday with the family. I can’t promise I won’t blog at all or think about work and dialogue but I will be definitely prioritising relaxation and self care.
I was at the Piece Hall Wellbeing Festival today interviewing other practitioners and visitors for Dwell Time about mental wellbeing and the arts. I had some really interesting conversations with a wide range of people and did 11 audio interviews which will uploaded to our website in due course, as well as our Youtube and Vimeo channels. Some people declined the invite due to shyness or anxiety but most people were happy to engage in conversation. Some participants were not phased by the microphones at all and relaxed, whereas other people we a bit nervous and as soon as the recordings stopped, they relaxed and started talking more openly and that’s when the most interesting conversations began happening! I talk people through the three interview questions beforehand so there’s no surprises but it is quite a nerve-racking thing to do if you’re not used to being recorded. It’s also helpful to say to people don’t worry about erms or saying something wrong – just repeat it and it can be edited out if needs be but we do very minimal editing on these interviews as they mostly don’t need it. It would be nice to capture the more relaxed conversations that happen as soon as the stop button is pressed but I don’t know if that would ever be possible ethically/legally whilst they are aware they’re being recorded.
