Following on from the success of last years On Balance photovoice project, in which we explored work and life balance within AIB Technology, we set out to again use the photovoice method to help people make some sense of this time, and to capture the insight and voice of employees as we navigate these unchartered waters.
The aim of this project was firstly to provide space and time for staff to reflect and to share their experiences, and their voices at this time of upheaval and change. Photovoice has several layers to it in terms of what it sets out to achieve – while it is a research method which allows us to gather and share our experiences and insight with others, it is also a narrative therapeutic technique. By taking photos and gathering together over several weeks to share them with others in a safe space, we have the opportunity to reflect and to contemplate our thoughts, feelings and emotions. This process has been found to be a powerful tool which can facilitate us in making sense of challenging experiences, and thereby feeling an increased sense of agency and empowerment. It is a tool that allows us to tap into our unconscious through the use of our creativity. From that place we put images and then words on what we are feeling, so that we can articulate that and share it with others.
Similar to On Balance, the photographs and stories which accompany them in this project are intimate portraits of how we are living, and how we are working – this time in the shadow of a global Pandemic, with photos taken during the beginning weeks of lockdown during April 2020. Once again there is an intimacy in their simplicity – dinner tables, birthday cakes, daily commutes replaced with daily walks, lunch with colleagues replaced with lunch with family-members. Participants contemplate the impermanence of life, and the importance of connection.
The title Re: Balance reflects many aspects of the photographs and narratives shared by participants. For many it is a time of contemplation and reconsideration – both regarding how we balance all aspects of our lives and how we may wish, and indeed be required, to come into a new rebalancing of our position on this planet. It also reflects the duality and paradoxical nature of this time and the experiences shared by the people who took part in this project. The psychiatrist Carl Jung described paradox as one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, he said that:
“only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life....by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, it gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs”.
In facing those paradoxes head on, the participants in this project reflect how we are forced to hold a multiplicity of realities, a diversity of experiences at the same time in life. While some are experiencing this time as a so-called ‘great pause’, others are finding they are busier and more stressed for time than ever. The great pause for some is an overwhelming period of loss, excess work and speeding up for others. Sometimes we experience the light and shade almost simultaneously. This time calls on us to hold this multiplicity of experiences for ourselves and for each other – both grief and joy, pain and growth, struggle and hope.
This project and its outputs are contemplative rather than definitive, open-ended rather than resolute. This time is challenging us as individuals, organisations and as societies, but it is also providing a pause to potentially reconsider how we live, how we work, how we connect, how we treat each other and the planet. It provides potential opportunities for rebalancing our relationship with the earth, and for addressing some of the most stubborn and far-reaching inequalities in society. As one participant puts it – it’s an opportunity to ‘wake up and smell the flowers’ with regard to what we take for granted, and our relationship to and responsibility towards others, particularly those most vulnerable in society, and towards the environment.
With an increased focus on the ways we work, and what the potential future ways of working should be, there are rightly calls for workers’ voices to be heard amongst all the so-called ‘expert’ discourses in this area. This photovoice project aims to go some way towards that goal – of putting the employee-voice at the centre of any debates we are aiming to have regarding what we should learn from this crisis.[1] The Greek root of the word crisis can be roughly translated as ‘to-discern’ or ‘to-sift’ – as we regain a new sense of balance regarding how we live and work, as we decide what needs to stay and what needs to go, all our voices matter.