Intervention 3—–event—–Comfort Zone Coffee(first phase)
In the first week, I test my ideas to several stakeholders. They are either homeless people or owners of small business. Tam and Moses as representation to illustrate my process and findings.
—-Tam
Tam is the owner of standalone lifestyle coffee shop—VSL Camden. He collaborates with two fashion business student of UEL to run his business for three years. I choose him to have a test since he is a small business owner who have close relationship with local community. Coffee shop is always a local community hub.
When he is making coffee for customers, I shown him the coffee cup and address my question and research accordingly, like peeling up a banana.
He is very suprised initially, since I can saw his eyes light up when he realised my intervention. And he shown me a lot of his experience and ideas relates to my question. I devided the content in to several parts:
Experience with homeless people
“Over the years, our shop always try to help homeless people around our district. We gave our food and drink to homeless people, and have a word with them. But they all gone now.”
“One day I walked on Kingscross station and I saw a homeless people sitting beside the station from time to time. I don’t have change and I gave him a 10 pound note instead. He said to me that he had not saw anyone bear with him for several hours. I feel very pleased that I can help him.”
“What do you mean by constructive and meaningful dialogue?”
“I think it is important to pay back to the society. You see I am quite busy now, but many people do not have this fortune to be busy.”
His expectation
“To me, comfort zone is a second place that I feel comfortable to stay in.”
“I think many people would like to hear their story, but certainly many of us don’t want to sit on the floor and talk to them. There are very few areas that can bring citizens on a level with homeless people.”
“If you need any help with the project, feel free to let me know. We are happy to work on your project. The cultural can spread, like fashion.”
What I learnt from this experience
Firstly, I am glad to hear that Mr Tam’s passion and shown great interest in helping with my project. My “Comfort Zone” idea create a rapport environment for him to express his view on a serious topic. I will cherish this experience and the relationship with Mr.Tam and his business.
Compare to the last intervention, this time I use phrases that people can easily understand and convey empathy, which allow him can raise his point of view immediately.
Second, I realised that doing intervention is very similar to pitch my ideas effectively and quickly to audience. Since time is money, people are usually preoccupied by other business or have daily schedule. To build dialogue and communication effectively with audience require clear reasoning, with high level of Emotional Intelligence and structurised language(Minto, 2019). I discover that I need to improve my ability to stucturise qualitative and quantitative data, and the clarity of my language during real-life communication, to make a convincing presentation to my stakeholders.
—Moses
Moses is a homeless person. He recently lose his job as a carer for old people.
“Begging for cash is really embarrasing”
“Seeking humanity in London is very difficult. People don’t care you know, it is a very rich country, people sometimes don’t make sense”
“There are a lot of homeless people man.”
“Comfort zone? Could be content, relaxed, feel safe, stable.”
“Well very interesting!”
“Connectivity is a problem man. There are no much understanding.”
What I learnt
I am suprised to find that so far there are people who not feel defensive on the issue I raise, and it really is a great tool to start of conversation. However, I discover that I need to find ways to collect people’s respond to my intervention. To record my result in clearer ways
On the intervention process, I notice that homeless people are lack of sense of time—-they stuck in the “dilemma”. As Csikszentmihalyi(1998) stated that the inertia of habit and social pressure are so strong that many people have no idea which components of their lives they actually enjoy, and which contribute to stress and depression. To help them to get out of this situation, the first step is to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention, with skill rather than inertia. “Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to makc a work of art.”
Also, photos by the homeless campaingn gave me some inspirations. Out of Home is a photographic exhibition, and a collection of limited edition photographic prints, telling precisely that story from the perspective of six people – Carly, Darren, Kelly, Craig, Joe, and Andre – five of whom lived through the pandemic without a home. Why not I allow them to create?
In order to help them to navigate their flow and get out of “dilemma”, I plan to add a new part in my intervention—by asking them to draw, paint or use their objects to tell a story of comfort zone.
Reference list:
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1998). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday. New York: Basic Books 48MQP3NNN1
Photos by the homeless: Lockdown images feature in new exhibition – BBC News