Articoli di riviste sul tema "Experiential connectedness"

Experiential purchases, such as movies, theme parks, and vacations, represent a unique, and exceedingly popular, type of marketing behavior. Despite the increasing popularity of purchased experiences, the question of what makes one experiential purchase superior to another remains elusive. Using a multimethod, grounded theory approach, the authors perform two qualitative studies that reveal high-quality experiential purchases are composed of five dimensions: uniqueness, fun, escapism, servicescape quality, and social congruence. Next, an empirical model of experiential purchase quality (EPQ) and its outcome variables is tested in two different settings. The results find support for the EPQ conceptualization and uncover that a high-quality experiential purchase can positively influence braggart word of mouth, nostalgia, and self-connectedness to the experience while also lowering price consciousness perceptions to repeat the experience. A comparison of short and long experiences found that customers put a heavier weighting on concepts such as escapism and social congruence in shorter experiences where longer experiences had a heavier emphasis on the servicescape and perceptions of fun. From a managerial perspective, our results highlight that a one-size-fits all approach in experiential management is problematic. Managers need to understand that customers have different evaluative criteria depending on the length of an experiential purchase.

Abstract Consumers routinely make decisions about the timing of their consumption, making tradeoffs between consuming now or later. Most of the literature examining impatience considers monetary outcomes (i.e., delaying dollars), implicitly assuming that how the money is spent does not systematically alter impatience levels and patterns. The authors propose an impatience asymmetry for material and experiential purchases based on utility duration. Five studies provide evidence that consumers are more impatient toward experiential purchases compared to material purchases and that this increased impatience is driven by whether the value is extracted over a shorter utility duration (often associated with experiential purchases) or a longer utility duration (often associated with material purchases). Thus, when an experience is consumed over a longer period of time, the results show that impatience can be diminished. Additional results show that the effect holds in both delay and expedite frames and suggest that the results cannot be explained by differences in scheduling, time sensitivity, affect, ownership, future time perspective, or future connectedness.

This essay outlines a place-based pedagogic method called Narrative Journey, developed by the author in his work at the Eden Project, United Kingdom. The essay describes the method in the context of children’s play and experiential learning in outdoor natural environments, and uses a critical and reflexive lens to describe praxis across two broad themes: story and mimesis, and story, place, and space. It also provides practical, theory-linked examples before concluding that Narrative Journey praxis can add support to children’s emotional connectedness to nature and outdoor experiential learning.

ObjectiveThrough the lens of a digital storytelling project exploring food traditions, social connectedness, and aging among diverse older adults, this article demonstrates how innovative pedagogies can contribute to developing a more culturally responsive workforce better prepared to meet evolving needs of diverse urban communities.MethodsIn the fall of 2017, 25 undergraduate students enrolled in an interdisciplinary gerontology practice course engaged in a digital storytelling project to explore food traditions and social connectedness among older adults living in the Bronx.ResultsThe stories underscore the importance of food and meals in everyday life, particularly for people growing old far from their home of origin. The words and images indicate that food practices can assert identity, sustain cultural ties and social connectedness, and mediate losses both physical and emotional.ConclusionsThe article suggests that integrating innovative pedagogies across health profession curricula and fostering interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaborations are two ways to better meet client needs. Moreover, providing opportunities for experiential learning extends higher education's commitment to integrating best practice pedagogies across the curriculum.

Background: Outdoor education often aims to facilitate positive human–nature relationships and craft healthy, sustainable lifestyles. Processes and outcomes of program innovations seeking to address “nature-deficit disorder” among children can be understood from a narrative perspective. Purpose: This study illuminates how a group of instructors working for a charity-based outdoor organization in Toronto, Ontario, perceive the cultivation of nature connectedness in and through the urban outdoor education programs they facilitate for children. Methodology/Approach: A narrative methodology was used to engage instructors in telling personal stories about their involvement and perceptions of programs they facilitate, and to interpret thematic insights into the broader meanings circulating within this instructor group. Findings/Conclusions: Analyses revealed that instructors story the cultivation of nature connectedness around three spatial metaphors: creating space for nature connection, engaging that space, and broadening that space. Findings cast light on how instructors situate their practices within a broader community committed to mentoring nature connectedness in individuals, families, and society. Implications: Instructor stories shed light on contemporary practices of outdoor experiential education, and the meanings and perceived impacts of nature-based learning. The study contributes to literature illustrating the promise urban outdoor education holds for fostering nature connectedness.

Experiential learning is not merely a set of tools and techniques to provide experiences for knowledge and skills acquisition but also learning that embraces certain principles that must be present at some time during learning. These principles are (a) a mixture of content and process, (b) an absence of excessive judgment, (c) engagement in purposeful endeavors, (d) encouraging the big-picture perspective, (e) the role of reflection, (f) emotional investment, (g) reexamination of values, (h) meaningful relationships, and (i) learning outside one’s perceived comfort zones. We implemented and evaluated a learning initiative in which 30 dental students participated in oral health promotion activities in a residential care home for older adults. Qualitative feedback provided by 24 students suggested that the initiative provided a mixture of content and processes for knowledge application, gave “the opportunity to develop creative interventions and make decisions”; allowed students to “solve problems and share knowledge”; helped them “see the reality more . . . and reach out to the community”; led them to reflect on their effectiveness, “not sure what we have done are sufficient to actually help”; motivated them to “take some time off to understand their troubles” and not just doing what they thought was required; inspired them to examine their values around “feeling of social connectedness . . . and a desire to give back”; and provided opportunities to learn outside their comfort zones, “step out of campus and encounter all the different people” and demonstrated that the experiential aspects of experiential learning can and should be evaluated.

Introduction: Emotion regulation in healthy functioning and in depression is typically examined as an intrapersonal phenomenon, but growing evidence suggests social factors affect individuals' strategy use and effectiveness. We examined whether the role of emotion regulation in depression—concurrently and over four weeks—depends on social connectedness, predicting that higher social connectedness would dilute effects of one's own strategy use regardless of specific strategy. Methods: Young adult participants (n = 187) completed measures of perceived social connectedness, depressive symptoms, two avoidant emotion regulation strategies (ruminative brooding and experiential avoidance), and two approach-oriented strategies (positive reappraisal and planning), and depressive symptoms again four weeks later (n = 166). Results: Cross-sectional associations of emotion regulation with symptoms were moderated by social connectedness: effects of both avoidant and approach strategies were weaker among more connected individuals. Prospectively, social connectedness moderated effects of approach strategies, but not avoidant strategies. Among more socially connected individuals, using approach strategies—which are typically adaptive—was associated with higher symptoms over time. Discussion: Results partially replicate previous research and support the role of social factors as important contexts of intraper-sonal emotion regulation and dysregulation in depression. Findings suggest that social resources can dilute intrapersonal effects regardless of strategy type—more in the shorter term than in the longer term—and can even lead seemingly adaptive strategies to backfire over time. Implications for research integrating emotion regulation, relationships, and depressive psychopathology are discussed.

We are interested in quantifying and uncovering the relationships that form between the board directors of companies. Using these relationships we compute three network centrality measures for each director in the network and employ them in the analysis of connectedness of directors. Our focus in this study is on the attributes that make a board member better connected. The biological, educational and experiential attributes are used as independent variables to develop a regression model measuring the impact on the three connectivity measures (degree, betweenness and closeness). Our results show that ?Age? has a direct significant impact on all connectedness measures of a board member. We also find that female directors have a higher measure of degree centrality and betweenness centrality, but lower closeness. The number of foreign degrees increases the degree centrality and betweenness centrality but not closeness. The three identified characteristics of ?Age?, ?Gender?, and ?Education? are supporting the idea that a high level of social connection can in part be expected by the characteristics of individual board members and can explain up to 25% of the board member?s connectivity.

Purpose Based on the Oktoberfest context and memory-dominant logic (MDL), the purpose of the study included assessing drivers of the perceptions of experience uniqueness; if these drivers and experience uniqueness perceptions transformed in memorable experiences; and if memorable experiences translated into enhanced life satisfaction. Based on these relationships, a typology and theory extension is provided integrating practical examples. Design/methodology/approach A five-factor model was tested using exploratory structural equation modeling and structural equation modeling; the factors included food and beverage quality; connectedness; experience uniqueness; meaningfulness and memorability; and life satisfaction. Findings Guests connectedness impacted life satisfaction perceptions. Positive perceptions of the experience uniqueness resulted in higher memorability. Food and beverage quality impacted both memorability and life satisfaction. Higher memorability resulted in higher life satisfaction. Attendee nationality impacted the relationship among several of the study’s factors. Research limitations/implications Progress was made on assessing the MDL concepts and translating them into quantitative values. Study results supported the impact of connectedness and product quality on perceptions of Oktoberfest experience uniqueness along with the impact of meaningfulness of the experience on life satisfaction perceptions. The authors acknowledged limitations because of one Oktoberfest beer tent focus and the weaknesses of survey methodology, limiting pre- and post-activity reporting and future investigation of moderating effects. Practical implications The consideration of higher order impacts (i.e. life satisfaction) is needed when delivering experiences and to entice loyalty and social media apostles. Consumers’ experience connectedness with high-quality perceptions and unique service design are likely to translate to memorable experiences, leading to life satisfaction perceptions. The concept of creating the experience “with” the customer appears to be a key aspect of memorability. Originality/value These results tested aspects of MDL and a typology emerged of ideal types as a modified MDL framework driven by two continua: transactional vs experiential quality and experiences designed “to” vs “with” customers.

Numerous spirituality models and tools have been developed in health education and research, but a gap still exists around the conceptual clarity and articulation of spirituality among nurses and healthcare providers. Nurses and healthcare providers still find it difficult to interpret and apply the concepts of spirituality in their practice settings. This paper provides a concept analysis of spirituality using the Walker and Avant method of conceptual analysis. Several databases including conceptual and empirical literature from various disciplines have been used. The defining attributes of spirituality included spirituality and religion as a separable or mutual construct, spirituality as a personal construct, wholeness and integration, meaning making and purpose, sense of connectedness and relationship, transcendence, inner source of power, energy, and strength. Major antecedents of spirituality found were faith, personal values, and belief systems, and life adversities. Consequences of spirituality included personal/spiritual growth and wellbeing, resilience, and religiousness. Spirituality is a unique and personal human experience, an individualised journey characterised by multiple experiential accounts such as meaning making, purpose, connectedness, wholeness and integration, energy, and transcendence. Spiritual experiences are often difficult to examine and measure using scientific tools and empirical language. Healthcare providers need to fully understand and apply spirituality and spiritual care aspects to provide holistic person-centred care.

The State 4-H Council of Missouri 4-H is an experiential leadership opportunity that engages youth as valued, contributing partners and ambassadors of the 4-H organization. While several state programs have a state 4-H council, there is little research regarding these councils or the impacts of state 4-H council service. This study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore the experience of State 4-H Council service among alumni within a framework of positive youth development theory. Council membership was found to carry expectations for lasting relationships and a sense of connectedness. In the area of leadership, State 4-H Council service was found to enhance understanding, develop strategies, and foster specific skills that allowed members to utilize these abilities in the early stages of their careers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the struggles of the excluded louder and has also left them socially isolated. The article documents the implementation of one instance of Radical Placemaking, an “intangible”, community-driven and participatory placemaking process, in Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV), Brisbane, Australia to tackle social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. KGUV community members were engaged in storytelling and interactive fiction online workshops to create experiential, place-based and mobile low-tech AR digital artefacts. The article expands on the methodology which involved a series of online workshops to design low-tech AR digital artefacts using digital collaboration tools (Google Classroom, Slack, Zoom) and VR environments (Mozilla Hubs). The study’s findings confirm the role of accessible AR/VR technology in enabling marginalised communities to create connectedness and community by co-creating their own authentic and diverse urban imaginaries of place and cities.

AbstractThis article reports on the experiences of four healthy individuals who attended a legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' psilocybin experiences and their after-effects. The experiential themes that emerged from these case studies closely match themes that have been identified in previous studies of psilocybin, including variability of the experience, the presence of mystical-type features, significant changes to subjective sense of self, and a generalized sense of connectedness. Participants framed their narrative accounts around moments of key insight, and these insights were related to a sense of connection: to self, others, and to a broader relational ontology. Embodiment, currently an understudied topic in psychedelic research, also emerged as a theme. The case studies presented here provide preliminary evidence to suggest that for healthy individuals in a well-controlled and supportive retreat setting, a high dose of psilocybin can lead to enduring positive after-effects that last up to twelve months.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs that attract and sustain student interest feature learning that is experiential, investigative, hands-on, personally significant to both students and faculty, connected to other inquiries, and suggestive of practical application to students’ lives. Such learning flourishes in a community in which faculty are committed equally to teaching, to maintaining their own intellectual vitality, and to partnering with students in learning, and in which institutional support for such a community exists. The Creative Scientific Inquiry Experience (CSIE) Program at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) is involved in retaining and increasing the number of STEM graduates by including faculty professional development, student connectedness to the sciences and mathematics through academic service-learning, and curricular reform. In this conference paper we report on the success of the CSIE program, including course development, student engagement, student success, especially among underserved students, and sustainability. This work is important because it offers insight into the development, sustainability, and scalability into faculty-driven STEM education reform spanning 15 years. Keywords: STEM education, retention strategies, undergraduate STEM, majors/non-majors

When the COVID-19 pandemic required all higher education learning to move to remote or online formats, students were challenged to maintain a sense of community and to advance in their education. By focusing on the immediate, human needs of students, IdeasCongress - a community-engaged experiential learning course with a curricular emphasis on transferable skills - flourished in the remote synchronous format. The only significant change was to shift the topic of the course to #RecoverTogether to guide our students in imagining a path through the pandemic while supporting local charities by developing plans for mitigating the impact that the pandemic was having on their service model. This paper outlines a case study of the course and reflections upon the experience of teaching during the pandemic restrictions, supported by student feedback from the September-December (Fall) 2020 semester. Based on this evidence, the approach appeared to be effective for student retention and engagement, and increased student feelings of connectedness to both the campus and the local community. The paper highlights key lessons learned while teaching and learning during challenging times and describe the teaching approaches used to support students.

The way people perceive contact with nature may impact their environmental attitudes and psychological well-being (WB). Nature relatedness (NR) refers to the affective, cognitive, and experiential aspects of individuals’ connection to nature. The aim of the presented research concentrates on the assessment of the relationship between well-being, self-control and connectedness with the natural environment. The data was collected via online questionnaire between March and April 2022. In the study, we combined descriptive statistics with analysis of variance. We also quantitatively assessed correlations between major components of NR scale and psychological WB across men’ and women’ inquires. The results showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between the general index of NR and overall psychological WB. Furthermore, correlation between specific aspects of NR and WB subscales were also observed. These interactions are considerable among both men and women. We have also identified a major correlation between NR and self-control, which indicates the link between the way a person approaches oneself and natural environment. Finally, the analysis provides evidence that women are on average more related to nature, although the men may benefit more from this kind of relationship. Further gender differences could be observed in terms of nature-relatedness perspective component, general self-control, score and overall NR score These relationships are highly vital among men while irrelevant among women.

Transnational responses to globalisation in the Asia-Pacific region have included the flow of Asian pop genres throughout Asia and beyond, which pose a modest challenge to the normative dominance of Anglophone pop globally. Over the last decade, Australia has entered this flow and become part of the market for Asian pop. Iwabuchi argues that ‘burgeoning popular culture flows have given new substance to the ambiguous imaginary space of “Asia”’. Recent growth in the Australian consumption and production of Asian popular music and media coupled with rapidly expanding, diverse and fluid Asian-Australian diaspora populations and communities of transient migrants from Asia, specifically international students, who together form Asian pop’s primary consumers in Australia, highlight the ambiguity of both ‘the imaginary space of “Asia”’ and the imaginary space of ‘Australia’. The article considers Australian engagement with Asian pop from two perspectives: K-pop dominated media production and commercial scale concerts of East Asian pop and the social and experiential dimension of how international students engage with live Asian pop. Ethnographic case studies of two Asian pop events draw attention to the self-contained, socially and culturally demarcated communities of international students in Australia. They illustrate how such concert events express shared identities; a collective sense of community, belonging and agency; and, further, a connectedness to ‘Asia’ and a disconnectedness to the Australian societies that enable their communities and pop music activities.

The Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project was the result of a partnership between Women's Health Goulburn North East and Mungabareena Aboriginal Corporation. The project was located in Wodonga and aimed to strengthen the community in terms of its Aboriginal identity. A range of activities provided opportunities for elders to share traditional skills and knowledge about Aboriginal culture particularly beliefs, men's business and women's business, dance and bush knowledge. A further dimension of the project was education of the mainstream community through presentations and workshops at schools, childcare centres, workplaces, festivals and universities. Immediate outcomes of the project included clear evidence of the power of experiential learning, a deepening understanding of culture, and the importance of story and connectedness. Eighteen months after the conclusion of the project, members of Mungabareena Aboriginal Corporation met with Women's Health Goulburn North East workers to reflect on the long term outcomes of the project. The value of cultural regeneration was affirmed and it was identified that the project raised the profile of the Koorie community in Wodonga and beyond. While the Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project has increased community understanding and pride in Aboriginal heritage and is working well, the lack of continued funding means it is not ongoing. The challenge now is to move forward with cultural regeneration with respect, integrity, care and wisdom.

AbstractUrbanization is increasingly compromising residents’ connection to natural habitats and landscapes. With established relationships between human–nature connection (HNC) and pro-environmental behaviour and human well being, there are calls for effective interventions to strengthen HNC in urban settings. However, much of this research has operationalised HNC in narrow psychological terms. Based on an embodied framework of urban human–food connection (HFC) as a specific dimension of HNC, this article explores the role of active urban gardening in promoting different types of internal and external HFC and their link with pro-environmental food behaviour (PEFB). Based on a quantitative survey in Germany addressing vegetable gardeners in Munich (N = 254), a principal component analysis extracted four components of HFC comprising external body-related HFC (i.e. immediate urban garden-body activities: food harvesting and experiential food interaction) and internal mind-related HFC (i.e. immediate urban garden-mind activities including food discovery as well as food consciousness). These were found to be statistically related to one another. Furthermore, regression analysis revealed that food consciousness through concerns on food consumption and environmental impacts as well as food as part of life attitude as an internal HFC is the sole predictor of PEFB. The study suggests an embodied HFC model emphasizing the need for local body- and mind-based nature connections for fostering earth stewardship. Future research should explore the relationship between inner dimensions of nature connectedness and external behavioural change to enable transformations towards sustainability.

This article presents a leadership model called bridging that I continue to develop as I progressively acknowledge my embedded tendencies and tensions long-experienced at the intersections and margins of my multicultural self and in cross-cultural communities. From within this social location, I attempt to translate what has been a precarious leadership journey into an experiential model promoting intentional communities, interpretations, and activities with an overarching purpose of reframing tension for the work of transformation. My conceptualization of intentional communities has three descriptors: (1) multicultural, (2) value-driven, and (3) prophetic. I then invite leaders to consider their interpretations of three categories of common tensions: (1) tension among the community, (2) tension between reality and vision, and (3) tension residing within individual leaders. I posit that the practice of reinterpretation is crucial to the work of bridging. The praxis of bridging as a leadership model is then categorized into three interrelated activities: (1) bridge-crossing, (2) bridge-making, and (3) bridge-being. Each discussion is undergirded by a biblical exemplar and described as necessary for reframing destructive tension toward transformative tension. In the final section, I advocate that bridge-leaders commit to self-care through connectedness to what I explain as one’s spiritual home and core cultural home and as a crucial component in sustaining bridge leaders for their important role in helping communities reach their vision for personal, communal, and systemic change.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effects of natural plants on satisfaction and loyalty in the hospitality servicescape and provides a theoretical framework explaining the underlying processes. Design/methodology/approach An experimental study (plants vs no-plants) was conducted in a restaurant with a sample of 119 individuals. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and bootstrapping moderated mediation analysis (Hayes, 2013). Findings The results of the study confirmed significant effects of indoor natural plants on consumers’ satisfaction and loyalty, mediated by the experiential value components of aesthetic value, service excellence and escapism. The absence of an interaction of these influences with consumers’ connectedness to nature indicates that the beneficial effects of indoor plants universally affect all individuals, independent of their personal degree of feeling connected with nature. Practical implications Indoor natural plants as ambient elements in restaurants can improve satisfaction and loyalty by enhancing the dimensions of aesthetics and escapism of the service experience, as well as the perception of service quality. Originality/value This is the first experimental study analyzing the effects of indoor plants on customer satisfaction and loyalty conducted in a real-life restaurant setting using actual plants. The findings contribute theoretically by providing an integrated conceptual model of the satisfaction and loyalty effects of atmospheric stimuli (i.e. plants) in the hospitality servicescape, which offers a process explanation based on the mediating influence of aesthetic value and the sequential mediations of aesthetic value → service excellence and aesthetic value → escapism.

AbstractUnlike other creatures, humans have the unique ability to delay their own extinction. We can store, analyze and transmit information to the next generations, and education helps us adapt to varied ecological situations. Looking beyond the 21st century to a post-industrial society where biological systems will emerge as the most renewable and sustainable activities on the planet, we need educational systems to prepare creative problem solvers who can confront and adapt to change and be willing to move toward lifelong growth and learning. Students need to understand the complexity of biological systems and the importance of connectedness. We need to educate them about watersheds and ecosystems, about the roles of a wide range of species and how they interact, and about long-term sustainability. Some programs already involve interactive student activities, case studies, and real world examples, and have empowered students to formulate their own approaches to challenges. A new initiative in the North Central region includes a structured experiential program in practical agroecosystem studies that taps into the technical and financial resources in the region's 12 land-grant universities and other organizations. In the future, we will need to forge more linkages between education and research, understand the impacts of alternative strategies for food production and other human needs, and search for ways to empower people to pursue their own educational agendas. This approach should include a mosaic of educational opportunities that will promote the survival of our species beyond the 22nd century.

e24033 Background: General health related factors such as obesity, unhealthy diets disproportionate with sugary and highly processed foods, inactivity, and smoking have repeatedly been shown to negatively impact survival and quality of life outcomes in cancer survivors. The Healthy Eating Active Lifestyle (HEAL) – GYN “rehabilitation” cancer program was developed to provide intensive group lifestyle training on exercise, nutrition, sleep, social integration, and stress management via a telemedicine platform. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of such an intervention and its tolerability, in addition to its impact on short-term quality of life for gynecologic cancer patients. Methods: HEAL – GYN consists of 8 weekly group sessions offering experiential instruction and personalized goal setting for patients with diagnosis of gynecologic cancer. Components are drawn from the tenets of lifestyle medicine. An oncologist certified in lifestyle medicine along with a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team addressed diet, physical activity, strategies for sleep and stress management, smoking cessation, and alcohol intake. The intervention included training to address unmet psychologic, emotional, physical, sexual, social, and spiritual needs common to cancer survivors. American College of Lifestyle Medicine questionnaires were administered, utilizing Likert scales (1-5) in a pre- and post- fashion to assess improvements in physical activity levels, dietary habits, sleep hygiene, and quality of life. Medical records were reviewed including anthropometric data. Results: 26 patients have enrolled thus far, and we report outcomes on the first 20 participants. The mean age was 58.8 years; 22 were Caucasian, and 7 were on maintenance therapies for gynecologic cancers. Average total severity of reported symptoms (scale = 100 points) on a general medical symptom questionnaire (MSQ) decreased by 22% (61 vs 48). Eight patients reported increased perceived levels of health and 6 had stable perception of health. There were also notable improvements from baseline in item assessments of eating behavior (34%), perceived stress (20%), and resilience (21%). Patients also reported a notable trend towards improvement in anxiety (35%) and depression (34%), as well as social integration and connectedness (30%). 100% of participants would “highly recommend the program” and none complained of stress or altered mood associated with online instruction. Conclusions: The telemedicine HEAL – GYN peri-habilitation program is feasible and well tolerated. In addition, the program may improve quality of life and may prevent further decline for those on treatment or maintenance therapy. These preliminary findings support continued investigation of a telemedicine healthy lifestyle peri-habilitative program.

Purpose The offender personality disorder (OPD) pathway provides services to people with histories of offending and traits of personality disorder (PD) who are at high risk of violent re-offending. The residential provisions have been developed as psychologically informed planned environments (PIPE), in which socially creative activities form an integral part. Ryan et al. (2018) suggest that social and creative activities offer individuals experiences to increase their understanding of themselves and others. The purpose of this study is to complete a service evaluation exploring how people who live on an OPD PIPE in a woman’s prison make sense of their experiences of a drumming, singing and ceremony group, which was offered to them as part of their provision PIPE. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service users (between 19 and 42 years old). Findings Thematic analysis identified three themes: emotional regulation, belonging and connectedness and humanising spaces. Research limitations/implications This study used a small sample (n = 6), and all participants were accessing the same OPD provision PIPE. Further, participation was voluntary, and results found may relate to possible biases in a self-selecting sample. The interviewer knew the participants through their clinical work, and despite being informed that participation in this research project would have no bearing on their treatment pathway, some may have participated as a way to demonstrate their compliance with the overall programme. A further limitation relates to the group being evaluated on its own without a comparison group. Practical implications This study has important implications for treatment delivery in prisons, as it demonstrates the therapeutic merit of social creative activities for one of the most complex, high-risk and challenging offender groups. The findings show that the specific combination of the physical act of drumming and the social act of drumming together may create an environment that allows people to heal and overcome both physical and emotional disconnections that have been caused by their trauma. Social implications This study’s findings provide further understanding of the experience of people who have survived trauma. Originality/value Findings suggest that the group provides therapeutic value, offering an alternative to traditional therapy and targets specific difficulties particularly associated with emotionally unstable and antisocial PDs. We suggest that socially creative activities form an important part of the rehabilitation process of complex, high-risk groups. Future research would benefit from focusing on the extent to which experiential learning through socially creative group participation can impact on lasting behavioural change.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyse online consumers' experiential responses towards visual user-generated content in social commerce fashion online shopping environments. The study develops and tests a UGC OCE framework incorporating aesthetic and relational experiential paths in the OCE.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a quantitative approach to examine fashion consumers experiential responses to UGC content. The sample comprised 555 respondents recruited via a consumer panel. SEM analysis was employed to analyse and test the framework model.FindingsThe findings illustrate that consumers are initially stimulated by an aesthetic experience, which then triggers a combination of relational, emotional and interactive experiences in fashion social commerce. The study extends the S-O-R framework by integrating it to the experiential “path” that indicates the series of experiences consumers encounter. Using S-O-R, the study presents the consumers' online experiential responses to viewing visual UGC, revealing that there are five experiential responses, all of which have an influence on online consumer behaviour. Responses towards visual UGC include visual, relational, emotional, cognitive engagement and interactive engagement, which were all identified to influence purchase intention.Originality/valueThis study is original in finding that, in the context of online fashion shopping, aesthetics drive relational experiences, and relational experiences drive flow and interactive behaviour and also purchase intention. Aesthetic experiences and positive emotions are powerful drivers of purchase intention and drive connectedness, flow and interactive behaviour. This study extends the literature by extending the frameworks in OCE and CE into the fashion UGC context.

Purpose The youth leadership development program is an opportunity to establish best practices for the development of youth and of the wider community. Based on underpinning research related to social cohesion and social capital, the purpose of this paper is to focus on connectedness is consistent with the work of Putnam (Bowling Alone). Design/methodology/approach Reflecting the multi-level character of all complex problems and also the need to explore common values, social networks and problem-solving mechanisms, the initial approach was a pre- and post-activity survey for participants, and focus groups with elders and parents. The pilot survey, however, revealed participants were unable to discriminate between the nominated Likert scales. The consequent approach turned to appreciative inquiry involving observational data and selected interviews with a random sample of participants from both gender groups, as well as focus groups with community elders. Findings The study presents findings from an experiential activity in a youth group to bridge social boundaries. Findings are presented using a social-ecosystem model. Key constructs relevant to a discussion of social cohesion and connectedness are discussed, and the youth development initiative identified bridging capital strategies and noted countervailing forces to engagement and successful integration. Central to effective social development strategies is the need for peer- and community-based initiatives to foster shared responsibility, hope and a sense of significance. The social-ecosystem framework offers a potential and realistic approach to enabling families and community groups to be the foundation of a safe and resilient country. Research limitations/implications A single case study, where the pilot survey revealed participants were unable to discriminate between the nominated Likert scales. The consequent approach turned to appreciative inquiry involving observational data and selected interviews with a random sample of participants from both gender groups, as well as focus groups with community elders. Practical implications Looking first at the participants in this program, engagement requires challenge and buy-in, much the same as in classroom-based educational strategies. There are some preconditions that vary by gender. For young men, there is a mask that they adopt. As well, there is a rift between fathers and sons – confirmed in the community consultation and a more general inter-generational gap that requires attention. There are competing tensions that emerge at the family, community and societal levels. For example, the prevailing discourse is on acute VE related responses. However, what is needed is a greater focus on building social cohesion. Conversely, if family commitment is an important motive to disengage from VE, then cultural realities such as fractured communities, lack of role models, as well as a lack of suitable knowledge and the infrastructure for people to deal with vulnerable youth makes the whole issue highly problematic. Social implications Central to community-based primary prevention responses and to bridging capital is the need for common values, strong social networks and shared problem-solving mechanisms. Table I presents a summary of key insights and countervailing forces (in italics and with a *) that illustrates a tug-of-war between different stakeholders in the social-ecosystem. This list is not exhaustive, but it provides a formative framework for the deeper exploration of community participation and evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of primary prevention. Originality/value An experiential approach to bridging social boundaries based on a youth development program in a refugee community is presented. Findings are presented using a social-ecosystem model was presented. Key constructs include an ecosystem model, and a framework that links social cohesion, capital and connectedness. The study presents ideas to activate bridging capital strategies and highlights countervailing conditions to engagement and development.

In the unique context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers and clinicians alike drew attention to the risks involved by physical and social isolation for mental health. Factors like resilience, gender, urban/rural environment, or preexisting anxiety can impact anxious states produced by home forced isolation. Based on these, we assumed that: i) there are significant differences in the level of anxiety (state) during the pandemic, depending on the living area of the subjects; ii) gender plays a moderating role in the relationship between resilience and anxiety; and iii) anxiety (trait), experiential avoidance, resilience, and family connectedness, determine the level of anxiety (state). The MemoryLab team conducted the present study on 495 subjects (n=411 women, age between 18 and 65). Of these, 350 live in large and medium urban areas, 63 in small urban areas, and 82 in rural areas. As instruments, we used The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI 2.0), The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire 2 (AAQ-2), The Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), The Family Connectedness Questionnaire, and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 10 (CD-RISC-10), as well as the standard division of living areas according to community size. Data collection took place online during the spring peak of the pandemic. According to ANOVA analysis, people living in small urban areas have a higher level of anxiety. The difference is significant compared to those living in large and medium cities and villages. Gender has no moderating role in the relationship between resilience and the anxiety state. Also, experiential avoidance, anxiety (trait), and resilience play a significant role on the level of anxiety (state), measured during social isolation. The results could be an important indicator for understanding psychological mechanisms guiding interventions to support the communities effectively.

Background: Community-based learning is a high-impact, experiential teaching practice where elements of social interaction and authentic participation transform cognitive understanding into meaningful knowing. In the allied health field, the incorporation of community-based learning provides unique access to populations that are not inherently available in a university classroom. Purpose: Researchers used a mixed methods approach to examine the influence of an intergenerational, community-based learning environment versus a traditional learning environment on exercise science students’ perceptions of overall classroom community, connectedness, and learning. Methodology/Approach: Quantitatively, students ( n = 122) completed Rovai's CCS which was then analyzed using a t-test. Qualitatively, students completed written reflective assignments designed to gather data regarding their perceptions of working with an older adult population. Findings/Conclusions: Overall students perceived significantly greater levels of classroom community, connectedness, and learning in the intergenerational, community-based learning environment and evidenced highly positive growth in their awareness and understanding of older adults. Implications: Inclusion of an intergenerational, community-based learning environment in allied health-related degree programs can enhance student's confidence in knowledge application and their ability to connect with the older population.

AbstractWith a growing body of research highlighting the therapeutic potential of experiential phenomenology which diminishes egoic identity and increases one’s sense of connectedness, there is significant interest in how to elicit such ‘self-transcendent experiences’ (STEs) in laboratory contexts. Psychedelic drugs (YDs) have proven particularly effective in this respect, producing subjective phenomenology which reliably elicits intense STEs. With virtual reality (VR) emerging as a powerful tool for constructing new perceptual environments, we describe a VR framework called ‘Isness-distributed’ (Isness-D) which harnesses the unique affordances of distributed multi-person VR to blur conventional self-other boundaries. Within Isness-D, groups of participants co-habit a shared virtual space, collectively experiencing their bodies as luminous energetic essences with diffuse spatial boundaries. It enables moments of ‘energetic coalescence’, a new class of embodied intersubjective experience where bodies can fluidly merge, enabling participants to include multiple others within their self-representation. To evaluate Isness-D, we adopted a citizen science approach, coordinating an international network of Isness-D 'nodes'. We analyzed the results (N = 58) using 4 different self-report scales previously applied to analyze subjective YD phenomenology (the inclusion of community in self scale, ego-dissolution inventory, communitas scale, and the MEQ30 mystical experience questionnaire). Despite the complexities associated with a distributed experiment like this, the Isness-D scores on all 4 scales were statistically indistinguishable from recently published YD studies, demonstrating that distributed VR can be used to design intersubjective STEs where people dissolve their sense of self in the connection to others.

Self-transcendence is thought to increase well-being and is implicitly promoted in contextual cognitive behavioral therapies (CCBTs). This study conceptualizes, develops, and validates the first comprehensive CCBT-informed self-transcendence questionnaire. Using a CCBT-informed theory, we propose four self-transcendence facets: distancing oneself from mental content, distinguishing an observer of mental experience that is separate from the content of experience, experiencing innate connectedness with other beings, and noticing the constantly changing nature of experience. We measured these facets with items from existing relevant questionnaires and novel, expert-informed items. Exploratory factor analyses and bifactor exploratory structural equation models supported the first three of these facets. Those factors evidenced convergent validity with decentering, defusion, experiential avoidance, and mindfulness, and criterion and incremental validity in predicting psychological well-being. Our findings support a CCBT-informed model of self-transcendence, introduce the first instrument to comprehensively measure the self-transcendence facets we identified, indicate links with well-being, and suggest future intervention targets.

A gardener wouldn’t dream of cultivating her plot with just a trowel, nor would a chef cook with just a knife, so why do many academics rely on prose as their only means of representing their work? I will explore how educational theory and practice might be cultivated through praxis in the context of the fundamental basis of all place-based learning – the body through which we all experience the world. I will use three interrelated representations to explore the linkage between contemplative practice and the development of teaching and learning as a process: poetry, art and prose. The roots of my investigation are threefold: my recent experience of a three year Iyengar yoga teacher training program which represents the contemplative component, an exploration of mixed media métissage, and my ongoing work as a high school teacher in an inner city setting using experiential learning to stimulate interaction in my classes. These educational perspectives are further nested among personal interests in wilderness expeditions, gardening and artwork that delve into my ecological connectedness with the world and my responses to it.

The primary objective of this qualitative study was to explore the therapeutic trajectories of individuals undergoing psilocybin-assisted group therapy. This interpretive phenomenological analysis focused on an enriched study sample of gay-identified cisgender men ( n = 9) with human immunodeficiency virus diagnosed before 1996 and clinically significant trauma symptoms. Microphenomenological interviews were carried out 1 day after participants’ individual psilocybin sessions to elicit fine-grained descriptions of the psilocybin-assisted treatment. Two major thematic change processes were identified using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. During their psilocybin sessions, participants reported transitioning out of habitual, evaluative modes of processing and into mindful, experiential modes of processing (from “autopilot” to “meta-aware”). Freed from their emotionally avoidant tendencies, participants were able to process and release previously disowned feelings (grief, shame) and access relational and self-transcendent feelings and prosocial attitudes (joy, gratitude, love, care, compassion). The treatment also supported processes of meaning-making and the realization of posttraumatic growth (in psychological, relational, spiritual dimensions) as participants integrated past traumas into their life narratives and identities (from “trauma-dominant” to “growth-dominant”). These findings suggest that administering adjunctive group therapy with psilocybin may enhance the effectiveness of trauma processing by reinforcing social cohesion, safety, trust, and belonging. These data provide the first empirical suggestion of psilocybin’s efficacy in alleviating trauma symptoms in a group-facilitated format and provide a deeper understanding of the potential psychological change processes involved in this novel treatment approach.

In this study, we explore how participants articulate experiences of emotions during Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. We posit that emotions fulfil experiential and interpersonal functions, which are construed and conveyed through language choices. An online narrative survey was carried out. About 88 responses were analysed. Participants were from England and Wales. The mean age was 48.9 years old (SD = 62). A mixed-method approach was used. This combined quantitative Corpus Linguistics analysis and qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with linguistic analysis. The findings show similarities to the public health and medical literature that highlight negative emotions, such as fear, distrust and anger in participants. However, we also found positive emotions not considered elsewhere, including happiness, relaxation, safety, optimism for the future and connectedness arising from the thematic IPA analysis. Emotions were construed using language explicitly labelling emotions and language implicitly signalling emotions. Our study highlights implications for managing risk behaviours associated with transmission in public health practices such as social distancing, as indicated by negative emotions. We also bring to light implications with perceived benefits of engaging in protective behaviours and social support central to public health measures, as suggested by the communication of positive emotions.

This paper explores the promising practice of an emerging culturally adapted, trauma-informed yoga program for Indigenous adolescent girls. I draw from my experiential learning during a series of 12 yoga sessions over 2018 and 2019 with eight Indigenous girls (ages 13–17) from rural and remote Inuit communities in Quebec, Canada. Participants had experienced varying degrees of child maltreatment and interaction with the child welfare system, and they were all under the care of youth protection services in a residential facility. The yoga and mindfulness intervention provided weekly 60-minute sessions in the residential unit. Yoga sessions integrated a blended model of cultural teachings, group dialogue, and trauma-informed yoga. The approach included circle sharing, cultural teachings, gentle progressions of physical postures, guided meditation, breathing techniques, centring practices, and beadwork. This promising practice explores trauma-informed yoga as a strengths-based community strategy for relational healing that promotes cultural connectedness, safety, and resilience among Indigenous adolescent girls removed from their rural and remote communities to a residential facility in an urban area. This paper outlines an introductory framework for health professionals, paraprofessionals, program administrators, and staff working with Indigenous children and youth in residential facilities. Specifically, this promising practice builds on existing findings of trauma-informed yoga with adolescents, as well as movement and centring approaches through an Indigenous lens of relational healing.

AbstractUser-focused monitoring (UFM) is a method of user-led mental health service evaluation that focuses on strengthening user involvement and developing the quality of services. Despite an increased emphasis on user involvement and the recovery orientation of services, scientific knowledge remains limited regarding how such goals can be realised. In this study, our aim is to explore UFM with a specific focus on how recovery processes are examined through the method in order to discuss how UFM can be developed in order to support a recovery orientation in mental health service evaluation. We sampled 20 Swedish UFM reports for qualitative analysis, and we found that UFM is a promising method for integrating a personal recovery perspective in service evaluations. By being performed peer-to-peer, the method has the unique ability to gather experiential knowledge regarding the situation of service users. UFM especially contributes to exploring service users’ experiences related to social connectedness and user involvement in services. We also discuss how the method can be developed to further support a recovery orientation in UFM. This might be achieved by integrating a process-oriented approach in the evaluations and by including the user informants’ own goals and views on what constitutes meaningful support in UFM. Suggestions for future developments concern incorporating personal recovery perspectives in the training of user monitors and creating structures for aggregating the knowledge produced through UFM.

Online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected student academic performance as well as mental, physical, and social wellbeing. During a lockdown at the University of Toronto in Canada (September 2020–April 2021), my students expressed an underlying sense of monotony yet uncertainty. I recalled a contrasting paradox from the teachings of Indigenous Cree on mental wellness in land-based experiences: a sense of stimulation and security that we can liken to variations of Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory. I modified my Environmental Science and Pathways to Sustainability course to support stimulation and security through embodied, interactive pedagogy at student-selected individual field sites. My main goals were to (i) support student mental wellness and (ii) provide an alternative to experiential field trips for understanding and connecting with nature as an adaptive complex system. I prompted students with field activities contextualized by a course narrative that purposefully directed attention to nature through intrinsically motivated curiosity, exploration, and discovery; conditions more similar to evolutionary environments of adaptedness than “getting away” in passive retreats. Student weekly field observations and reflections culminated in a post-intervention Reflection Assignment (n = 15) which became the bases of thematic and narrative analysis. Other assignments were added to my evaluation of complexity comprehension. The intervention successfully instilled security and stimulation via purpose-directed attention to different aspects of nature in the same setting followed by periods of knowledge integration. This empowered students with sustainability mindsets indicated by greater self-reported: sense of coherence, change agency, cognitive and affective restoration, nature connectedness, nature relatedness, social connectedness, and pro-environmental values. Assignments demonstrated an understanding of the environment as an adaptive complex system that was not present at the beginning of the course. Some students’ self-construct adopted nature and its complexity, empowering them with greater trait resilience. This work speaks to opportunities for merging psychological restoration and analytical curricula by integrating cognitive and sensory meaningfulness in sustainability narratives. It asks scholars to reflect on how we operationalize foundational theories of Environmental Psychology based on ancestral survival conditions and encourages empirical research to consider how sociocultural contexts can direct attention to nature through purposeful inquiry.

Tackling complex twenty-first century global health challenges requires crossdisciplinary collaborations that extend beyond physical classrooms and across continents. The Transdisciplinary Education and Community Health Collaboratory (TEaCH CoLab) is a global teaching co-op established by health promotion and humanities faculty at three universities (Waterford Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology, Carlow in Ireland, and the University of Washington, Bothell in the U.S.). The primary goals of TEaCH CoLab are to enhance global learning and problem-solving among the next generation of community and public health practitioners, to improve public health teaching (with a focus on digital pedagogy), and to increase empathy and community-connectedness. In this descriptive article, we present our program model and lessons learned from the first three years of collaboration to provide insights into how such capacity-building projects are established and sustained over time and across diverse geographical, cultural and temporal landscapes. Collaboration happens primarily online through academic and community partnerships, collaborative online learning, and pedagogy discussion and development. Students get to engage with course content and experiential learning that is part of a shared, global curriculum which emphasizes social justice, health equity, cultural humility and anti-racism, and advocacy. Our “lessons for the field” are collective, practice-based reflections by members of TEaCH CoLab based on their experiences and their involvement in development and facilitation. Our model for learning may help other health promotion scholars and practitioners develop meaningful global learning experiences that strengthen the interconnectedness of praxis, pedagogy, and communities.

Mindfulness has emerged as a potential motivator for sustainable lifestyles, yet few studies provide insight into the relationship between mindfulness practice levels and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. We also lack information about the significance of meditators’ behavioral differences in terms of their measurable environmental impact and the motivational processes underlying these differences in pro-environmental performance. We classified 300 individuals in three groups with varying meditation experience and compared their pro-environmental motivations and levels of animal protein consumption. Exceeding prior attempts to compare high-impact behaviors of mindfulness practitioners and non-practitioners, we created the most detailed classification of practice engagement by assessing frequency, experience and type of meditation practice. This nuanced view on mindfulness practice reveals that advanced meditators, who reported high levels of connectedness with nature (CWN), subjective happiness and dispositional mindfulness showed significantly more concern for the environment. They also demonstrated the lowest levels of greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation and water use related to their animal-protein consumption. This study is the first to follow a self-determination theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the motivational differences between meditator groups. We revealed that advanced meditators reported significantly more integrated motivation toward the environment than non-meditators. We also provided preliminary evidence for a new theoretical framework suggesting that experiential strategies such as mindfulness practices could strengthen the relational pathway of pro-environmental behaviors. Using sequential mediation analysis, we confirmed that the negative effect of mindful compassion practice on greenhouse gas emissions from animal-protein consumption is partially mediated by CWN and integrated motivation toward the environment. While our study does not support assumptions of causality, it shows that much can be learned by studying the motivations of advanced meditators for maintaining high levels of pro-environmental behavior.

With more classrooms within higher education mobilizing strategies for internationalization, collaborative online international learning (COIL), also referred to as virtual exchange, is an effective approach at offering intercultural competence through experiential learning. This strategy provides students who face barriers to international travel the opportunity to engage with students from other countries in meaningful ways, while enhancing and reinforcing course content. Grounded in the transformative learning theory, this study evaluates the effectiveness of a virtual exchange that was implemented within an undergraduate global public health course. The virtual exchange connected students from the University of Florida (within the US) with medical students in a microbiology course at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Using adapted reflection prompts, we assessed the students' knowledge and learning before, during, and after the virtual exchange. This was coupled with a final paper to capture how personal backgrounds and experiences may contribute to their perception of the virtual exchange, as well as if they felt their global perspective had changed or shifted during the experience. Using directed content analysis for each of the measurements, two researchers coded the data independently to then present agreed upon salient themes to the larger group. Of the 28 randomly sampled students who participated in the virtual exchange, seven major themes emerged from the data: Connectedness; Openness; Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills; Communication; Cultural Identity; Anticipation of Options for New Roles, Relationships, and Actions; and Absence of Change. Through this evaluation it was clear there was a variance of different perspectives with many sampled students having diverse lived experiences that influenced their worldview prior to the virtual exchange. Despite course-related barriers, students acknowledged several facilitating factors that improved their intercultural competence and knowledge of course content. The integration of a virtual exchange within the classroom, with careful design and implementation, can provide a unique experience for students and an inclusive approach to learning.

Abstract Background People with chronic conditions experience functional impairment, lower quality of life, and greater economic hardship and poverty. Social isolation and loneliness are common for people with chronic conditions, with multiple co-occurring chronic conditions predicting an increased risk of loneliness. Peer support is a socially driven intervention involving people with lived experience of a condition helping others to manage the same condition, potentially offering a sense of connectedness and purpose, and experiential knowledge to manage disease. However, it is unclear what outcomes are important to patients across the spectrum of chronic conditions, what works and for whom. The aims of this review were to (1) collate peer support intervention components, (2) collate the outcome domains used to evaluate peer support, (3) synthesise evidence of effectiveness, and (4) identify the mechanisms of effect, for people with chronic conditions. Methods A systematic review of reviews was conducted. Reviews were included if they reported on formal peer support between adults or children with one or more chronic condition. Data were analysed using narrative synthesis. Results The search identified 6222 unique publications. Thirty-one publications were eligible for inclusion. Components of peer support were organised into nine categories: social support, psychological support, practical support, empowerment, condition monitoring and treatment adherence, informational support, behavioural change, encouragement and motivation, and physical training. Fifty-five outcome domains were identified. Quality of life, and self-efficacy were the most measured outcome domains identified. Most reviews reported positive but non-significant effects. Conclusions The effectiveness of peer support is unclear and there are inconsistencies in how peers are defined, a lack of clarity in research design and intervention reporting, and widely variable outcome measurement. This review presents a range of components of peer support interventions that may be of interest to clinicians developing new support programmes. However, it is unclear precisely what components to use and with whom. Therefore, implementation of support in different clinical settings may benefit from participatory action research so that services may reflect local need.

The 2019–20 bushfires that raged in eastern Australia were an overwhelming natural disaster leading to lives lost or upended, and communities destroyed. For almost a month, Canberra, Australia's capital city in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), was obscured by smoke from fires which threatened the outer suburbs. While smoke itself is experientially different from many natural disasters, it nevertheless poses a significant public health threat. As the impact of extended bushfire smoke in an urban setting is relatively unexplored we aimed to capture the individual and community-level experiences of the event and their importance for community and social functioning. We responded rapidly by conducting semi-structured interviews with a range of Canberra residents who, due to their personal or social circumstances, were potentially vulnerable to the effects of the smoke. Three major themes emerging from the narratives depicted disruption to daily life, physical and psychological effects, and shifting social connectedness. This study highlighted the ambiguous yet impactful nature of a bushfire smoke event, and identified four simple key messages that may be critically relevant to policy making in preparation for similar smoke events in the future.

Health Health is a production, a process, and not a goal. It is a means and not an end state, required “to liberate life wherever it is imprisoned by and within man, by and within organisms and genera” (Deleuze). We live our health as a network, within networks, within social, technological, political and biological networks, but how does the network concept understand health? And how does the network concept implicate health within other networks, for better or for worse? Biopolitical Relations In its diverse forms, network thinking institutes a relational ontology, an ontology of connection and of connectedness. Whether the connections being explored are those governing the proverbial ‘six degrees of separation’, the small world in which “no-one is more than a few handshakes from anyone else”, the rhizomatic imperative that not only is everything connected but it must be, or even the ordinality of the mathematical regimen of belonging (Alain Badiou), one gains the impression that network thinking is the expression of a common world-view, a zeitgeist. Yet to think in this way is not only to lose sight of the important qualitative differences evident in the manifold conceptions of ‘network’ but is also to overlook differences in descent in the genealogy of knowledges and hence the differential inscription of those knowledges in power relations (another network…). The case of immunology is analysed here as one line of descent in network thinking, selected here for its susceptibility to exemplify a series of biopolitical implications which may not be so evident in other scientific fields. What follows is an attempt to address some of these implications for our understanding of the materiality of communications. Self - Nonself Since the groundbreaking work of Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnett in the 1940s and 1950s, immunology has become known as the ‘science of self-nonself discrimination’. In the first half of the twentieth century, as Pauline Mazumdar has argued, immunology was caught up in a classificatory problematic of the nature of species and specificity. In the latter half of the twentieth century, it might be argued, this concern becomes a more general one of the nature of biological identity and the mechanisms of organic integrity. Yet it is licit to see in these innocently scientific concerns the play of another set of interests, another set of issues or, to put it slightly differently, another problematic. We can see in the autonymic definition of immunology as the ‘science of self-nonself discrimination’ a biopolitical concern with the nature, maintenance and protection of populations: a delegation of the health of the body to a set of autonomous biological mechanisms, an interiorisation of a social and political problematic parallel to the interiorisation of the social repression of desire traced out by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their Anti-Oedipus. There are a number of points which are relevant here. The intellectual roots of immunology are to be found in Darwinian theory. Socially, however, immunology develops out of a set of public health practices, a set of public health reforms. Immunology locates the mechanisms for maintaining the integrity of the organism ‘under the skin’ and in a sense shifts the focal point of the problem of health to the internal workings of the organism. In this way, it reconfigures the field of social action. The enormous success of vaccination programmes and a concentration on the ‘serologic’ of immunisation focalises immunological research on outer-directed reactions. We can find a trace of the social field to which immunology is related in the name of the discipline itself. The term ‘immunology’ derives from the Latin term ‘immunitas’ which signified an exemption from public duty. The mechanisms of the immune system are routinely figured as weapons in a war against the enemy (Paul Ehrlich: “magic bullets”). And war, as Agamben has argued, exemplifies a state of exception. Given the way in which immunology shifts health inside the body, its enemies become ‘any enemies whatever’, microphysical forces with no apparent connection to the socius. The ability to combat any enemy whatever offers decisive evidence of the miraculous abilities of the self, the sovereignty of its powers. The self which the immune system protects is imagined to be defined anterior to that system, on a genetic basis, independent of the rules governing interactions in the system itself. The ability of the immune system to respond to and destroy any enemy whatever and thus maintain the organism’s sovereign identity demonstrates its ‘intolerance for foreign matter’ (Macfarlane Burnet). The molecular terrain on which its combat is waged is only apparently divorced from the socius. Idiotypy Network theory offers an interesting response to this set of ideas. Niels Jerne developed idiotypic network theory as a way of overcoming some of the difficulties in the accepted version of how the immune system works. The immune system possesses the remarkable ability to distinguish between everything which is a friend of the organism and everything which is an enemy. The key question which this poses is this: how and on what basis does the immune system not react to self, why does it posses what Paul Ehrlich called ‘horror autotoxicus’? The standard wisdom is to maintain that those elements which can react to self are firstly only very small in number and, secondly, eliminated by a process of learning (‘clonal deletion’). Yet this view is wrong on both counts – there is a far higher concentration of ‘auto-antibodies’ in the individual organism than the standard theory suggests, and an organism which develops in the absence of contact with ‘antigens’ originating in the environment can nevertheless develop a perfectly functional immune system. Jerne’s theory develops as a piece of self-organisational wisdom. Everything in the immune system is connected. The activities of all the elements in the system are regulated by the activities of every other. One type of cell specifically recognises and thus is stimulated into action (i.e. the production of clones) by another. However, this reaction is dampened down by another recognition event: the proliferation of clones of the first type of cell is regulated by the response of a third (also a production), and so on. This cascading chain of stimulus-response events is called an idiotypic network, by Jerne, a recurrent set of ‘eigen-behaviours’, and it reverses the conventional wisdom about the way in which the immune system operates: the destructive response to the other is no longer an exception but a limiting case in the auto-consistent behaviour of a self-organising network. An immune reaction is not a characteristic of the miraculous power of the immune system but a consequence of the network’s loss of plasticity. Autopoiesis Francisco Varela and the so-called ‘Paris School’ have managed to draw out the radical consequences of this way of looking at organic processes. The first point they make is that idiotypic network theory substitutes an autonomous conception of immunity for the predominantly heteronomous view of immunity as a set of defensive mechanisms. A variant on the more general autopoietic postulate of the circular causality inhering in living systems, the eigen-behaviour used to characterise immune networks attempts to move our understanding of biological processes away from the biopolitical problematic of defence and security. As Varela and Anspach put it, “to say that immunity is fundamentally defence is as distorted as saying that the brain is fundamentally concerned with defence and avoidance. We certainly defend ourselves and avoid attack, but this is hardly what cognition is about, that is flexibility in living”. An idiotypic network is thus conceptualised as a radically autonomous system, which effectively knows no outside. The idea that the immune network has defence as its prime function is argued by Varela to result from the epistemically relative nature of the claims made by the biologist: it is a claim which makes sense from the specific point of view of the observer but does not – cannot – explain what the immune network is doing in its own terms. The place of the observer in biology is fundamentally contingent. The assertion of the contingent nature of the observation in biology is not, however, accompanied by an analysis of the immanent implication of these observations in the socius. As Maturana himself has noted, “the fact that science as a cognitive domain is constituted and validated in the operational coherences of the praxis of living of the standard observers as they operate in their experiential domains without reference to an independent reality does not make scientific statements subjective”. Certainly not, if these statements can be demonstrated to belong to a specific set of discursive ‘regularities’. The argument that the immune network does not have defence as its primary function of course raises the question of what the immune network is actually for. The research carried out by Varela and his associates suggests, and this is the second point, that the immune network is responsible for the assertion of organic identity. Far from being a secondary mechanism for the protection of a sovereign identity defined elsewhere and otherwise, the organisation of the immune network as a recurrent set of mutually reinforcing chemical interactions (in which defence is instead the result of an excessive perturbation of the system), suggests that the network has a primary role in defining identity. To put it another way, the immune network is a means of individuation. The field of theoretical immunology more generally has explored the logic of the network constitution of individuality. Experimental evidence suggests that vertebrate organisms replace up to 20% of the chemical components constituting the immune network daily, thus demonstrating a highly productive processual character, but how does this activity cohere into the development of a consistent set? Theoretical immunologists use some of the arguments of complexity theory to show that even the continuous random production of notional molecular compounds (which would correspond to the elements of the immune network – B-cells, T-cells and so on) can yield an organised consistent set. They argue that this set or network of interactions forms a ‘cognitive field’ which determines the sensitivity of the network to any one of its elements at any moment in time. The sensitivity of the network – equally its degree of connectedness – determines the likelihood that any element will be integrated or rejected. The less connected the network to any element, the more likely that element will be rejected. Interestingly, the shape of the cognitive field of the network – what it is sensitive to – varies over time, and the network is more flexible, or plastic, at earlier stage in its history than later. The crucial point, however, is that there are no necessarily enduring components to this network. A useful term to describe this is metastability: immune networks provide evidence for an ongoing process of individuation, itself a more or less chaotic process. Such a view is far from gaining univocal adherence in the immunological community and yet it certainly offers an interesting and inventive way of looking at the anomalies of currently available experimental evidence, not least the difficulties standard theory has of grasping auto-immune diseases. But does the network conception of immunity displace the biopolitical problematic ? As mentioned above, for Varela this view of the immune network as an autonomous, cognitive system offers a way out of the predominantly militaristic characterisation of the organism’s maintenance mechanisms, and thus permits the conceptualisation of what he calls ‘flexibility in living’. Yet, if the claim sketched out above concerning the link between immunology and biopolitics is correct, one is entitled to ask about the extent to which network thought as a way of grasping biological processes can really constitute a locus of resistance to contemporary biopolitical imperatives. Pacification To finish, it is worth noting firstly that with biopolitics, in the genealogy sketched out by Foucault, mutations in power are accompanied by a shift in its phenomenal manifestation: the noisy destructiveness of sovereignty, with its power over life and death, is replaced by the anonymity of the grey procedures of knowledge. Cognition could perhaps be another form of power. And power is for Foucault, of course, a network. Or, to take another view, contemporary power may be characterised by the state of the exception becoming the rule (Agamben): the exceptional response of the sovereign has spread across the whole social fabric or by the generalised diffusion of the death drive across the whole of the socius (Deleuze and Guattari). The diffuse cognitive qualities of the network conception of immunity might in this sense correspond to contemporary shifts in the nature of power and its exercise. As Francois Ewald has put it in his discussion of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, “[n]ormative knowledge appeals to nothing exterior to that which it works on, that which it makes visible. What precisely is the norm? It is the measure which simultaneously individualises, makes ceaseless individualisation possible and creates comparability”. Works Cited Giorgio Agamben Homo Sacer (Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 1998) Albert-Làszló Barabàsi Linked: The New Science of Networks (Perseus, Cambridge MA,2002) Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Anti-Oedipus (Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 1983) François Ewald ‘A power without an exterior’ in T.J. Armstrong (ed.) Michel Foucault Philosopher (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1992) Pauline Mazumdar Species and Specificity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995) Francisco Varela and Mark Anspach ‘The Body Thinks: The Immune System in the Process of Somatic Individuation’ in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K.Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.) Materialities of Communication (Stanford University Press, Stanford CA,1994) Cary Wolfe ‘In Search of Post-Humanist Theory: The Second-Order Cybernetics of Maturana and Varela’ in Cultural Critique (Spring 1995) 30:36 <http://www.santafe.edu/projects/immunology/> Links http://www.santafe.edu/projects/immunology/%20 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Goffey, Andrew. "Idiotypic Networks, Normative Networks" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/07-idiotypic.php>. APA Style Goffey, A. (2003, Aug 26). Idiotypic Networks, Normative Networks. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/07-idiotypic.php>

This article uses a case study of a Melbourne-based youth media project called Youthworx to explore the processes at stake in cultural engagement for marginalised young people. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2010, I identify some ways in which the city is implicated in promoting or preventing access to socially valued spaces of creativity and intended social mobility. The ethnographic material presented here has both empirical and theoretical value. It reveals the important relationships between the experience of place, creativity, and social life, demonstrating potentialities and limits of creativity-focused development interventions for marginalised youth. The articulation of these relationships and processes taking place within a particular city setting has theoretical implications. It opens up an opportunity to consider "suburbs" as enacted by specific forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than treating "suburbs" as abstract, analytical constructs. Finally, my empirically grounded discussion draws attention to cultural and social consequences that inhabiting certain social worlds and acts of travelling "to and beyond" them have for young people. Youthworx is a community-based youth media initiative employing pathway-based semi-formal creative practices to re-engage young people who have a history of drug or alcohol abuse or juvenile justice, who have been long disconnected from mainstream education, or who are homeless. The focus on media production allows it to tap into, and in fact leverage, popular creativity, tacit knowledge, and familiar media-based activities that young people bring to bear on their media training and work in this context. Underpinned by social and creative industry policy, Youthworx brings together social service agency The Salvation Army (TSA), educational provider Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT), youth community media organisation SYN Media, and researchers at Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University. Its day-to-day operation is run by contractual, part-time media facilitators, social workers (as part of TSA’s in-kind support), as well as media industry experts who provide casual media training. Youthworx is characterised by the diversity of its young demographic. One can differentiate between at least two groups of participants: those who join Youthworx because of the social opportunities, and those who put more value on its skill-development, or vocational creative industries orientation. This social organisation is, however, far from static. Over the two years of research (2008-2010) we observed evolving ideas about the identity of the program, its key social functions, and how they can be best served. This had proceeded with the construction of what the Youthworx staff term "a community of safe belonging" to a more "serious" media work environment, exemplified by the establishment of a social enterprise (Youthworx Productions) in 2010 that offers paid traineeships to the most capable and determined young creators. To accommodate the diversity of literacy levels, needs, and aspirations of its young participants, the project offers a tailored media education program with a mix of diversionary, educational, and commercial objectives. One-on-one media training sessions, accredited courses in Creative Industries (Media), and industry training within Youthworx Productions are provided to help young people develop a range of skills transferable into a variety of personal, social and professional contexts. Its creative studio, where learning occurs, is located in a former jeans factory warehouse in the heart of an industrial area of Melbourne’s northern inner-city suburb of Brunswick. Young people are referred to Youthworx by a range of social agencies, and they travel to Brunswick from across Melbourne. Some participants are known to spend over three hours commuting from outer suburbs such as Frankston or even regional towns such as King Lake. Unlike community-based creative programs reliant on established community structures within local suburbs (for example, ICE in Western Sydney), Youthworx moved into Tinning Street in Brunswick because its industry partner—The Salvation Army—had existing youth service infrastructure there. The program, however, was not tapping into an existing media “community of practice” (Lane and Wenger); it had to forge its own culture of media participation. In the early days of the program, there were necessary material resources and professional expertise (teachers/social workers/a creative venue), but it took a long while, and a high level of dedication, passion, and practical optimism on the part of the project managers and teaching staff, for young people to genuinely engage in media training and production. Now, Youthworx’s creative space is a “practised place” in de Certeau’s sense. As “the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers” (De Certeau 117), so is the Youthworx space produced by practices of media learning and making by professional creative practitioners and young amateur creators (Raffo; for ideas on institutionalised co-creative practice see Spurgeon et al.). The Brunswick location is where our extensive ethnographic research has taken place, including regular participant observation and qualitative interviews with staff and young participants. The ethnographers frequently travelled with young people to other locations within Melbourne, accompanying them on their trips to youth community radio station SYN Media in the CBD, where they produce a weekly radio show, as well as to film shoots and public social events around the city. As an access learning program for marginalised youth from around Melbourne, Youthworx provides an interesting example to explore how the concerns of material and cultural capital, geographic and cultural distance intersect and shape processes of creative participation and social inclusion. I draw on our ethnographic material to illustrate how these metonymic relationships play out in the ways young participants “travel distance” (Dewson et. al.) on the project and across the city, both figuratively and literally. The idea of “distance travelled” is adapted here from evaluation literature (for other relevant references see Dowmunt et al.; Hayes and Edwards; Holdsworth et al.), and builds on the argument made previously (Podkalicka and Staley 5), to encompass both the geographical mobility and cultural transformation that young people are supported to undergo as an intended outcome of their involvement in Youthworx. This paper also takes inspiration from ethnographic approaches that study a productive and transformative relationship between material culture, spatial geography and processes of identity formation (see Miller). What happens to Youthworx young participants as they travel in a trivial, and at first sight perhaps inconsequential, way between the suburbs they live in, the Youthworx Brunswick location and the city is both experientially real and meaningful. “Suburban space” is then a cultural site that simultaneously refers to concrete, literal places as well as “a state of mind”—that is, identification and connections that are generative of a sense of identity and belonging (Ferber et al.). Youthworx is an intermediary point on these young people’s travels, rather than the final destination (Podkalicka and Staley 5). It provides access to various forms of new spatial, social, and creative experiences and modes of expression. Creating opportunities for highly disenfranchised young people to access and develop new social and creative experiences is an important aspect of Youthworx’s developmental agenda, and is played out at both philosophical and practical levels. On the one hand, a strength-based approach to youth work assumes respect for young people’s potential and knowledges—unlike public discourses that deny them agency due to an assumed lack of life experience (e.g., Poletti). In addition to the material provision of "food and shelter" typical of traditional social work, attention is paid the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy of human needs, with creativity, self-esteem, and social connectedness at the top of the scale (see also Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas). Former Manager of The Salvation Army’s Brunswick Youth Services (BYS)—one of Youthworx’s partners—Craig Campbell argues: Things like truth and beauty are a higher order of dreams for these kids. And by truth I don’t mean the simple lies that can be told to get them out of trouble [but] is there a greater truth to life than a grinding existence in the impoverished neighbourhood, is there something like beauty and aesthetics that wakes us up in the morning and calls a larger life out of us? Most of those kids only faintly dream of such a thing, and this dream is rapidly being extinguished under the weight of drugs and alcohol, abusive family systems, savage interaction with law and justice system, and education as a toxic environment and experience. (Campbell) Campbell's articulate reflection captures the way the Youthworx project has been conceived. It is also a pertinent example of the many reflections on experience and practice at Youthworx that were recorded in my fieldwork, which illustrate the way these kinds of social projects can be understood, interpreted and evaluated. The following personal narrative and contextual description introduce some of the important issues at stake. (The names and other personal details of young people have been changed.) Nineteen-year-old Dave is temporarily staying in an inner-city refuge. Normally, however, like most Youthworx participants, he lives in Broadmeadows, a far northern suburb of Melbourne. To get to Brunswick, where he does his accredited media course three days a week, he either catches a train or waits for a mini-bus to drive him there. The early-morning pick-up for about ten young people is organised by the program’s partner—The Salvation Army. At the Youthworx creative studio, located in the heart of Brunswick, right next to railway tracks, young people produce an array of media products: live and pre-recorded radio programs, digital storytelling, mini-documentaries, and original music. Once at Youthworx, they share the local neighbourhood with other artists who have adapted warehouses into art workshops, studios and galleries. The suburb of Brunswick is well-known for its multicultural profile, a combination of industrial and residential estates, high rates of tertiary students due to its proximity to universities, and its place in the recent history of urban gentrification. However, Youthworx participants don’t seek out or engage with the existing, physically proximate creative base, even within the same street. On a couple of occasions, the opposite has been the case: Youthworx students have been involved in acts of vandalism of local residents’ property, including nearby parked cars. Their connections to the Brunswick neighbourhood remain poor, often reflecting their low social capital as a result of unstable residential situations, isolation, and fraught relationships with family. From Brunswick, they often travel to the city on their own, wander around, sit on the steps of Flinders Street train station—an inner-city hub and popular meeting place for locals and tourists alike. Youthworx plays an important role in these young people’s lives, as an important access point to not only creative digital media-based experiences and skill development, but also to greater and basic geographical mobility and experiences within the city. As one of the students commented: They are giving us chances that we wouldn’t usually get. Every day you’re getting to a place, where it’s pretty damn easy to get into; that’s what’s good about it. There are so many places where you have to do so much to get there and half the time, some people don’t even have the bloody bus ticket to get a [job] interview. But [at Youthworx/BYS], they will pick you up and drive you around if you need it. They are friends. It is reportedly a common practice for many young people at Youthworx and BYS to catch a train or a tram (rather than bus) without paying for a ticket. However, to be caught dodging a fare a few times has legal consequences and young people often face court as a result. The program responds by offering its young participants tickets for public transport, ready for pick-up after afternoon activities, or, if possible, "driving them around"—as some young people told me. The program’s social workers revealed that girls are particularly afraid to travel on their own, especially when catching trains to the outer northern suburbs, for fear of being harassed or attacked. These supported travels are as practical and necessary as they are meaningful for young people’s identity formation, and as such are recognised and built into the project’s design, co-ordination and delivery. At the most basic level, The Salvation Army’s social workers pick young people up from the Broadmeadows area in the mornings. Youthworx creative practitioners assist young people to make trips to SYN Media in the city. For most participants, this is either the first or sporadic experience of travelling to the city, something they enjoy very much but are also somewhat daunted by. Additionally, as part of the curriculum, Youthworx staff make a point of taking young people to inner-city movie theatres or public media events. The following vignette from the fieldwork highlights another important connection between physical journey and creative expression. There is an excitement in Dave’s voice when he talks about his favourite pastime: hanging out around the city. “Why would you walk around the streets?” a curious female friend interjects. Dave replies: “No, it’s not the streets, man. It’s just Federation Square, everywhere … There is just all these young wannabe criminals and shit. People don’t know what goes on; and I want to do a doco on the city, a little doco of the people there, because I know a lot of it.” Dave’s interest in exploring the city may be interpreted as a rather common, mundane routine shared by mildly adventurous adolescents of all walks. And yet, there is much more at stake in his account, and for Youthworx young participants more generally. As mentioned before, for many of these young people, it is the first opportunity to travel to the city. This experience then is crucial in a sense of self-exploration and self-discovery. As they overcome their fear of venturing out into the city on their own, they also learn that they have knowledge which others might lack. This moment of realisation is significant and empowering, and they want to communicate this knowledge to others. Youthworx assists them in learning how to translate this knowledge in a creative and constructive way, through an expression that weaves between the free individual and the social voice constructed to enable a dialogue or understanding (Podkalicka; Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas; also Soep and Chavez). For an effective communication to occur, a crafted social voice requires skills and a critical awareness of oneself and an audience, which is very different from the modes of expression that these young people might have accessed previously. Youthworx's young participants draw heavily on their life experiences, geographical locations, the suburbs they come from, and places they visit in the city: their cultural productions often reference their homes, music clubs and hang-out venues, inner city streets, Federation Square, and Youthworx’s immediate physical surroundings, with graffiti-covered narrow alleys and railway tracks. The frequent depiction of Youthworx in young people’s creative outputs is often a token of appreciation of the creative, educational and social opportunities it has offered them. Social and professional connections they make there are found to be very valuable. The existing creative industries literature emphasises the importance of social networks to existing communities of interest and practice for human capacity building. Value is argued to lie not only in specific content produced, but in participatory processes that establish a link between personal growth, individual skills and social and professional networks (Hearn and Bridgestock). In a similar vein, Carlo Raffo uses Granovetter’s concept of “weak ties” to suggest that access to “social relations that go beyond the immediate locality and hence their immediate experiences” can provide marginalised young people with “pathways for authentic and informal learning that go beyond the structuring influences of class, gender and ethnicity and into new and emerging economic experiences” (Raffo 11). But higher levels of confidence or social skills are required to make the most of vocational or professional opportunities beyond the supportive context of Youthworx. Connections between Youthworx participants and other creative practitioners within the creative locality of Brunswick have been absent thus far. Transitions into mainstream education and employment have also proven challenging for this group of heavily marginalised youth. As we found during our ongoing fieldwork, even the most talented students find it hard to get into mainstream education courses, or to get or keep jobs. The project serves as a social basis for young people to develop self-agency and determination so they can start engaging with new opportunities and social networks outside the program (Raffo 15). Indeed, the creative practitioners at Youthworx are key facilitators of connections between young people and the external world. They act as positive role models socially, and illustrate what is possible professionally in terms of media excellence and employment (see also Raffo). There are indications that this very supportive, gradual process of social learning is starting to bear fruit for individual students and the Youthworx community as a whole as they grow more confident with themselves, in interactions with others, and the media work they do. Media projects such as Youthworx are examples of what Leadbeater and Wong call “disruptive innovation,” as they provide new ways of learning for those alienated by formal education. The use of digital hands-on media production makes educational processes relevant and engaging for young people. However, as I demonstrate in this paper, there are tangible, material barriers to releasing creativity, or enhancing self-discovery and sociality. There are, as Leadbeater and Wong observe, persistent links between cultural environment, socio-economic status, corresponding attitudes to learning and educational success in the developed world. In the UK, for example, only small percent of those from the lowest socio-economic background go to university (Leadbeater and Wong 10). Youthworx provides an opportunity and motivation for young people to break a cycle of individual self-destructive behaviour (e.g. getting locked up every 6 months), intergenerational reliance on welfare, or entrenched negative attitudes to learning. At the basic level, it encourages and often insists that young people get up in the morning, with social workers often reporting to have to “knock at people’s houses and get them ready.” The involvement in Youthworx is often an important reason to start delineating between day and night, week and weekend. A couple of students commented: I slept a lot. Yeah, I was always sleeping during the day and out at night; I could have still been doing nothing with my life [were it not for Youthworx]. Now people ask if I want to go out during the week, and I just can’t be bothered. I just want to sleep and then go to [Youthworx] and then weekends are when you go out. It also offers a concrete means to begin exploring the city beyond the constraints of their local suburbs. This literal, geographical mobility is interlocked with potential for a changed perception of opportunities, individual transformation and, consequently, social mobility. Dave, as we have seen, is attracted to the idea of exploring the city but also has creative aspirations, and contemplates professional prospects in the creative industries. It is important to note that the participants are resilient in their negotiation between the suburban, Youthworx and inner city worlds they can inhabit. Accessing learning, despite previous negative schooling experiences, is for many of them very important, and reaffirming of life they aspire to. An opportunity to pursue dreams, creative forms of expression, social networks and education is a vital part of human existence. These aspects of social inclusion are recognised in the current articulation of social policy reconceptualised beyond material, economic equality. Creative industry policy, on the other hand, is concerned with fostering creative outputs and skills to generate engagement and employment opportunities in the knowledge-based economies for wide sections of the population. The value is located in human capacity building, involving basic social as well as vocational skills, and links to social networks. The Youthworx project merges these two policy frameworks of the social and creative to test in practice new collaborative approaches to youth development. The spatial and cultural practices of young people described here serve a basis for proposing a theoretical framework that can help understand the term "suburb" in an intrinsically relational, grounded way. The relationships at stake in cultural and social participation for marginalised young people lead me to suggest that the concept of ‘suburb’ takes on two tightly interwoven meanings. The first refers symbolically to a particular locale for popular creativity (Burgess) or even marginal creativity by a group of young people living at the periphery of the social system. The second meaning refers to the interlocked forms of material and cultural capital (and distance), as theorised in Bourdieu’s work (e.g., Bourdieu). It includes physical, spatial conditions and relations, as well as cultural resources and possibilities made available to young participants by the project (e.g., the instituted, supported travel across the city, or the employment of creative practitioners), and interlinked with everyday dispositions, practices, and status of young people (e.g., taste). This empirically-grounded discussion allows to theorise ‘suburbs’ as perceived and socially enacted by concrete, relational forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than analytically pre-conceived, designated spaces within an urban system. The ethnographic material reveals that cultural participation for marginalised youth requires an integrated approach, with a parallel focus on material and creative opportunities made available within creative sites such as Youthworx or even the Brunswick creative area. The important material constraints exemplified in this paper concern socio-economic background, cultural disadvantage and geographical isolation and point to the limits of the creative industries-based interventions to address social inclusion if carried out in isolation. They tap into the very basis of risks for this specific demographic of marginalised youth or "youth at risk." The paper suggests that the productive emphasis on the role of media and communication for (youth) development needs to be contextualised and considered along with the actual realities of everyday existence that often limit young people’s educational and vocational prospects (see Bentley et al.; Leadbeater and Wong). On the other hand, an exclusive focus on material support risks cancelling out the possibilities for positive life transitions, such as those triggered by constructive, non-reductionist engagement with “beauty, aesthetics” (Campbell) and creativity. By exploring how participation in Youthworx engenders both the physical mobility between suburbs and the city, and identity transformation, we are able to gain insights into the nature of social exclusion, its meanings for the youth involved and the project managers and staff. Thinking about Youthworx not just as a hub of creative production but as a cultural site—“a space within a practiced place of identity” (De Certeau 117) in the suburb of Brunswick—opens up a discussion that combines the policy language of opportunity and necessity with concrete creative and material possibilities. Social inclusion objectives aimed at positive youth transitions need to be considered in the light of the connection—or disconnection—between the Youthworx Brunswick site itself, young participants’ suburbs, and, by extension, the trajectory between the inner city and other spaces that young people travel through and inhabit. Acknowledgment I would like to thank all the young participants, staff and industry partners involved in the Youthworx project. I also acknowledge the comments of anonymous peer reviewer which helped to strengthen the argument by foregrounding the value of the empirical material. The paper draws on the larger project funded by the Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. Youthworx research team includes: Prof Denise Meredyth (CI); Prof Julian Thomas (CI); Ass/Prof David MacKenzie (CI); Ass/Prof Ellie Rennie; Chris Wilson (PhD candidate), and Jon Staley (Youthworx Manager and PhD candidate). References Bentley, Tom, and Kate Oakley. “The Real Deal: What Young People Think about Government, Politics and Social Exclusion.” Demos. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.demos.co.uk/files/theRealdeal.pdf›. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1987. Burgess, Jean. “Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling.” Continuum 20.2 (2006): 201–14. Campbell, Craig. Personal Interview. Melbourne, 2009. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. 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