Chapter 37 How can we survive and thrive as Survivor Researchers? (original) (raw)

This chapter documents the impact of undertaking research-related activities asking the overarching question, ‘How can we survive and thrive as survivor researchers?’ A brief summary of the Survivor Researcher Network (SRN) is given and the impact of the current context of austerity in the United Kingdom (UK) outlined. Following this, the 4Pi National Involvement Standards (4Pi-NIS) developed by the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) (2015) act as the starting point in this critical reflection. The addition of further P’s to the 4Pi-NIS relating to issues of privilege, power, parity and progression in survivor-led research processes are discussed. In addition, a number of autoethnographic poems, collectively known as Expanded I poems (Lovell, 2017), are interspersed throughout the body of the text to support the issues raised, placing lived experience firmly at the top of the hierarchy of evidence presented. Building on Gilligan et al.’s (2003) voice-centred relational data analysis process, the poems are constructed from our spoken words to foster critical reflection across personal (I), interpersonal (you), objectified (it), group (we) and community (they) levels of experience. These Expanded I poems function as an ‘alternative performance’ (Madison, 2006, p. 322) to both explore and illustrate issues raised in aiming to ‘resist the repetitive and hegemonic power to reinscribe identity and value’. Our hope in doing so is to heighten readers’ awareness of the systemic and other changes needed for us to both survive and thrive as survivor researchers. This is of critical importance when working with and indeed in the current hierarchical neoliberal societies in which we reside and over which we have little or, more often than not, no control. Four projects are described that reflect resistance in action, including: MaDCaff and their peer-led performance cafes in community spaces across Wales; the democratisation of knowledge in commissioning services; decolonising history through play production; and crit-walking with White privilege and supremacy in youth education. Lastly, we outline our intention to remain ‘in difficulty’ (Maileo, 2017, n.p.) with ourselves in relation to our ‘Whiteliness’ (Tate and Page, 2018, p. 141) and other areas of intersectional inequity as SRN members. We commence with a discussion of equality as it relates to SRN and the impact a sustained period of austerity has had upon diverse disabled people residing in the UK.