Spinning Plates at Gladstone’s Residential Library
On June 17th Katherine Runswick-Cole and I, together with our colleagues Sara Ryan and Francesca Ribenfors from Manchester Metropolitan University, met at Gladstone’s Residential Library in Hawarden, North Wales for a two night residential trip. The trip was planned as an opportunity to collectively analyse research data and write a paper together as part of the NIHR(135080) Tired of Spinning Plates project.
As a first time visitor to the library I was blown away by the beauty of the building and the sense of peace that surrounds you upon arrival. This was also my first experience of a writing (and analysing!) retreat and it did not disappoint. Temporarily escaping the hustle and bustle of busy lives we were in the wonderful position of having a private room for meeting and talking together and use of the beautiful — and silent — reading rooms. We worked between the two, back and forth, between collective research chatter and working through data and silent writing and reading. This gave us a chance to really get into the rich interview data we have collected through interviews with family carers of adults with learning disabilities and follow the threads of kindness, unkindness and absences of kindness in the lives of family carers and the people that they love and care for. The uninterrupted focus we were all able to experience, away from the usual disruptions and interruptions of busy jobs and lives was incredible. We were all thrilled to come away from a seemingly short amount of time with a fully and collectively drafted paper ready for final edits and submission and couldn’t believe how much we achieved in this time. We look forward to sharing the paper in due course so watch this space!
The evenings together and breaks scattered through the day for lunches and coffees together were valued by us all and I think we all feel like a stronger team as a result of this residential writing retreat together. Katherine and I are so grateful to the School for funding this trip which was incredibly productive and we were all so appreciative of having the space and time to collectively work through the project data and write together in such an inspiring location — thank you!
Dr Martina Smith is a Research Associate at the School of Education.
