Three conversations and an opening door

Three conversations this week with postgraduate students, thinking through work on place, arts, culture and museums. None of them were commissioned, scheduled or billable. All of them were among the more useful hours of my week.I say yes to these asks, always, and I want to be clear about why.

The conversations I had at that stage of my own research shaped everything that came after.

People gave me their time when they had no particular reason to, and what they gave was rarely an answer. It was more often a reframing: a question I had not thought to ask, a reference that opened a door, or the plain reassurance that the fluid, back-and-forth, spinning around process I was in was the ordinary condition of the work rather than evidence I had got it wrong.

That is mostly what these conversations do. Research in place and culture can be isolating, and the sector can look, from the outside, like a closed room with the rules already agreed. In many ways it is. But it will never not be if the door to that room remains shut. In my small way, I want to be that opening of the door though. And in that room, it is often a set of people who are, for the most part, still working things out themselves, and who mostly find it interesting to be asked.

So, two things.

To those of us already in the sector: say yes. An hour of your time is a small thing to give and often a large thing to receive. And these conversations are not one way. I come away from them with my own assumptions turned over, and with a much better sense of what is actually being asked of place right now, and by whom.

To students: make the ask. It is far less daunting from this side of the email than it feels from yours. A short, specific message about what you are working on and what you are stuck on is enough. The worst outcome is a no, or a slow reply, and neither of those is a judgement on you or your work.

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