Thomas Wood & Morag in the Kitchen
16 Oct 2023

We met today to look at the data we have collected so far…66 people have had a discussion with us about their feelings about living in England and thought about it long enough to dredge a song that epitomises life in England. While we were talking songs were coming through on our data-collecting app from a care home that was being visited by Jon Beetham, who has worked there and knows the people well. 

We started to analyse the data and found that although we had reached our target demographic in some areas, we have not reached it in others and have to do some further targeted research. We made a plan.

When we deliberately set a fixed yes/no alternative to the discussions around the Citizenship words we did this to avoid fence-sitters. In retrospect, we could have defined the words a little more precisely - what does “Courage” actually mean? We also discussed that we had veered people away from thinking about attitudes about government behaviour and more towards community / friends. A lot of people had much to say about government behaviour but we did not think that this was reflective of society as a whole. 

We have our final venue arranged at Camp LGBTQ+ bar on Northdown Rd and Thomas and I will visit there on Oct 28th as we have been advised that Saturday will be the best day. 

I was standing in the High St in Margate recently and a man came up to me to talk about the project. Apparently, people are going home and discussing it. This is exactly what we set out to achieve and very satisfying. 

I have had a few suggestions of songs from people interested in the project but who do not live in Margate, but although I am collecting these separately for a comparison interest, they will not be used in the data set.