Period of exchange : 2006-2007
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Whether you are or not a member of the network, this page enables you to take an active part in the exchange of practices for street workers. All contributions are welcome. To simplify the process of exchanges and interactions, each year a generic theme is chosen on which we concentrate.
Later, based on all your productions, a synthesis will be done and put on-line on this website.
THEME : the methodology of social street work
Period of exchange : 2006-2007
The realities and ways relating to street work vary from one country to the other, from one city to the other, including from one street to the other. Each street worker knows for a fact that street work practice cannot be summed up to the application of a pre-established pattern. Made of innovation and creativity, the profession of street worker is re-invented day after day. It is on the basis of your respective experiences and the resulting exchanges that we shall endeavour to write a publication about this very rich theme on the methodology of social street work.
How to take part ?
Two phases of data collection are proposed. Ideally you should use the questions listed hereunder to enliven gatherings for reflection, training and collective exchanges. But you are free also to reply individually to the questions and send us the contents.
First phase :
For the first phase of data collection, we suggest 3 questions.
1. Describe, as accurately as possible, a complete week of your street work (Timing, place, public, action). This question will help us to highlight the diversity of roles carried out by the street workers.
2. Tell us the story of a typical meeting between yourself and your public, considered remarkable, significant and representative of your work. Here it goes about telling a particular story, out of the ordinary and precise about a meeting you have experienced with your public (in group or individually). What seems anecdotic very often brings out the essential elements of the practice.
3. Describe your environment, your public and your partnership relations Street “space” is always very varied, the ideal would be to start from a graphic map of you work environment, to explain how it functions and to include in it a description of your public and the way you proceed to get into contact with it. It is also a matter of locating our institution with regard to other actors (partners, public commission, competition , avoidance, …).
Second phase :
Quite a few workshops or street workers who are not member of the network, have already taken part in the 1st phase and have sent us many interesting data. This being the case, we invite you to the 2nd phase.
In concrete terms, it is a question of using the “life story” as a tool for exchanges and to collect information. To do this, we advise you to organise collectively one or several auto training days with a trainer or entertainment officer who organizes the floor takings, the hearings and the synthesis, accompanied by a secretary who writes down the stories and their conclusions, completely or partly. This transcription can be made easier by means of an audio and/or video registration. There are various forms of life stories. With a concern to be complementary with the questions of phase 1, we advise you to use the autobiographic life story.
It is a question of telling one’s own street worker’s story. “To talk about one’s life, is to build it anew”. Write or tell one’s autobiography, is trying to seize one’s full personality, is to make a self-synthesis, of what one’s profession is about and the underlying motivations for having chosen the street space as professional space. The life story has effects both on the narrator and on those it addresses. It allows a better understanding of the social and identity linked stakes present in human interaction.
The importance is to avoid reducing the life story to an individual experience. It goes mainly about spotting the paths we follow within a “space of possible positions” which fully justify the choices we make. After having heard or read one or more life stories and after having cleared one or the other element of synthesis, we invite you to send us your data which will serve as basis for the writing of a guide on the “Methodology of street work”.
Good work !
To send us your contributions, please click here
or send them to Dynamo International,
Rue de l’étoile n°22, 1180 Brussels -Belgium
or by fax +32 2 378 44 21.