Welcome to the fourth article in this series where we’re dissecting the multifarious entity of Digital Humanities (DH). To understand the context and scope of this series, and to consider the research questions upon which the investigation is based, please view the previous articles here, here and here. We’ll also be referring to my online survey Hands Up for Digital Humanities – the quantitative input to this series.

The Loft, a modern event space on Plymouth’s Barbican – we’ve been here before, in article one. Back then, I was late, sneaking in at the back. This time I’m early and I’ve got my own chair – it’s one of those up on the stage. Alongside the other speakers – both male – talking about architectural visualisation and start-up investment, I’m here to discuss Creative Writing. At a digital technology event. Talk about odd-one-out.

It’s just over a year since my first Digital Plymouth meet-up in June 2018. Two months later I had been made one of the organisation’s team members – they were looking to add an exotic perspective, an outside angle to the board, and as a Creative Writing lecturer, I apparently fit the bill. Fast-forward to November 2019 and here I am, giving a talk of my own…

Immediate success story, right? To some extent, but for someone who constantly battles imposter syndrome, succeeding this far away from home comes at a price.  

Initially identified in the 70’s, imposter syndrome is a disabling affliction with connections to depression and anxiety disorders. It is common in academic and educational settings and typically affects more women than men due to the impact of gender stereotypes.

As Gina Gibson-Beverly and Jonathan P. Schwartz note: such individuals “are unable to view accomplishments as a result of their own competence but instead attribute them to external factors, such as luck and chance. Characteristics include an inability to internalise positive feedback, fear of evaluation and failure, guilt about success, and underestimating oneself while overestimating others.”

Cheery stuff.

So why would someone with a permanent need for the periphery enter an unknown field voluntarily, to the extent of becoming embroiled at a decision-making level? And why discuss such difficulties publicly? What am I doing?

For the longest time, I couldn’t tell you. But since entering the digital world I realised that my eclectic interests (not piecemeal passions, as the imposter in me likes to taunt) are never going to neatly align. Disclosing mental health conditions for staff in academia is still a taboo issue, and I was recently told by a successful entrepreneur that admitting such things in the business world is tantamount to professional suicide. But I sense I can’t be the only one who feels like this – and if I’m already bucking the trend by just being here, I might as well be honest about how hard it is and why.

The digital arena is comprised of collaboration, Digital Humanities exists at the intersection of art and science, whilst digital writing depends on a holistic approach to a variety of methods. So to hell with it. It might feel irrelevant and like no-one will be interested in my talk – bringing an unknown topic into an established arena – but there are always overlaps to be found if we just communicate, right? From ballet to kickboxing, I’ve been going off-piste my entire life. Time to own it.

And that’s what I’m doing, or pretending to at least.

Psychologically, I’m already there. Ethos-wise, thanks to the incredible feminist and queer theorist Gloria Anzaldūa, I’ve always advocated existing in the borders. And the pragmatist in me has found Amy Cuddy’s power poses reliably effective – ‘fake it till you become it’.

So, feeling inept bringing new ideas into an established space? Check. Convinced that no-one will be interested? Check. Feeling less relevant than the other speakers? Check. Fears have taken up residence and we’re doing it anyway. 

Soon the attendees start drifting in  – more than I’d prefer – lining up at the bar and taking their seats. Happily, my talk comes in the middle (but don’t worry, my chair is on the edge ready for emergency escape): ‘Rise Up for Digital Writing (feat.) The Reciprocity Circle’. The…what circle? Thanks to Byte the Book this was a great success. More later.

When my time comes, I launch straight in. First, Digital Humanities. I present the alien term to a blur of blank faces. Reference the DH Lab at Exeter University. Take them through the DH survey I set-up in 2018; aims, intentions and findings. ‘Interdisciplinary collaboration’ is the primary concern for respondents when thinking about improvements to DH provision. An initiative that relies on individuals not only ambling about the periphery, but traversing it entirely; something that gets a lot of air-time in Higher Education, but struggles to translate in practice, especially across STEM and non-STEM subject areas. Still, it’s desirable, if not easily achievable. Another validating reason for me to be here, combatting fears, speaking.

Innovations across digital Creative Writing all rely on an interdisciplinary ethos. I take my brightening crowd through some examples. The Byte the Book network, previously mentioned, is a great starting point for anyone traversing the crossovers of writing and all-things digital, in particular their event on 7 February – the aptly titled ‘Confluence’ – which brings together writers, technologists, and the wider publishing industry to discuss how technology is changing the way we make and consume stories.

Beyond networking, there are exciting developments in creative practice, from student projects to storytelling apps. And here’s where I get to my favourite slide in the talk (cue proud-teacher moment) – ‘Vessel 4012’ by Callum Hendley, one of my third-year Creative Writing students. A digital narrative created through the reassuringly accessible gennarrator.org. It’s as if the audience can sense my delight, as I detect some definite smiles and even the patter of understanding laughter.

I start to relax – it’s going great! Oh wait, what’s this?

***HTTP 404, 404 Not Found, 404, Page Not Found, Server Not Found***

The error message that all lecturers dread. It had come for me, here, in front of all these people. The links so meticulously tested beforehand are. Not. Working. 

Luckily it’s not my first rodeo. I’m already pretending, so I can keep going. I can laugh it off… And I do. I hear myself recover, the words keep coming, and I describe rather than demonstrate the remaining examples. Thankfully the content is impressive enough to carry itself.

Simulacra by Kaigan Games, a ‘realistic “found phone” horror game that takes place entirely on the screen of a mobile phone. A voyeuristic experience that combines point and click adventure games, found footage videos and fully realised phone apps.’

Lotus created by Dutch writer Niels ‘t Hooft. A ‘meditative story app’ enriched with sound, colour and animations; ‘put on your headphones, shut yourself off from your surroundings, and float away into a new kind of narrative experience.’ Hooft, a Writing Platform contributor, recounts his journey here.

A Picture of Wind by digital poet and Plymouth-based writer JR Carpenter. Written as a response to the 2014 storms which hit the Southwest of the UK, it uses live weather data to inform specific word-choice, and as such is different every time you view.

And here we are, I’ve made it! We’ve reached the final slide, and this returns us to the aforementioned ‘Reciprocity Circle’. My talk has been smoothly situated before the break, so I can lead the audience into the exercise, with the promise of beer refills soon to follow. 

I take them through some rules and background:

First, it’s a practical exercise that involves everyone getting up off their seats – considering their imminent visit to the bathroom or bar, this is not a problem. Second, it’s incredibly simple: everyone takes a post-it note and writes down one thing they need help with and one thing they can offer help with. This can be closely related to their creative work or the digital realm, or as far away as gardening or house-moving. 

This “need / offer” dichotomy means everyone gives something and everyone gets something. Whilst it is unlikely that everyone will have their needs met upon the first encounter, the process engenders a reciprocal culture that is informal, compassionate and interdependent. Even if no-one can help directly, there is always someone who knows someone else who is working on a project and looking for someone who can.

It is an effective, encouraging, high-energy activity that gets people talking. Even the more anxious types. It makes independent or passion project more visible. It builds interdisciplinary, cross-subject, and multi-faceted connections. It highlights where similar work might be occurring and helps to form partnerships.

And all you need are people, post-it notes and a wall for browsing.

I learned about the ‘Reciprocity Circle’ at Byte the Book’s Confluence last year, however, it originally comes from Adam Grant’s 2013 book Give and Take. For something that looks like one of those infuriatingly positive ‘self-help’ type books, it’s decidedly not one of those books. Grant talks about how there are ‘givers, takers and matchers’, people who, in social situations, tend to either give more, take more, or match other people up. Whilst there might be some truth that some ‘givers’ are often ‘doormats’, ultimately it is this group who occupies both the bottom and top of the success ladder.

And so the Reciprocity Circle, whilst designed to spark conversations amongst strangers, it encourages participants to become ‘givers’ in the complete sense – giving something to others, but more crucially, giving to ourselves by accepting help from others in return. As Grant says: “The givers who excel are willing to ask for help when need it. Successful givers are every bit as ambitious as takers and matchers. They simply have a different way of pursuing their goals.”

As I relay all this to my audience, most poke uncertainly at the piles of post-its in front of them, but a brave few are already grabbing pens and scribbling away. 

Initial nerves aside, it turns out to be a great success of the night, with conversations and connections continuing throughout the evening. Since my talk takes the audience into a break, they gladly refuel at the bar, and participate and peruse the give/take wall with interest. For me the effort doesn’t stop with my talk. Whilst I was relieved of the stage, I feel a responsibility to the exercise, and so take up a comfortable post lingering on the periphery.

My most insightful conversation involves a Games’ Design lecturer from Plymouth University who attended with a group of students. He describes how reluctant the students were – what could possibly interest them in a Creative Writing talk? But just as I had anticipated a lack of interest, the lecturer anticipated crossovers, and thankfully he was right.

It seems the digital arena coaxes out the commonalities between us. In addition to the Games’ Design conversation, I received two further invitations to speak, along with a referral to work with a technologist on an AI project… Exciting stuff! After all that nervous nausea, elevated breathing, hands sweating and shaking, it was definitely worth it. 

I might still feel like an imposter, but at least now I’m in imposter with a purpose. Just goes to show, despite reservations and fears, it definitely pays to go off-piste. And next time, maybe I’ll feel a little bit more like I belong.

Welcome to the second article in this series where we’re dissecting the multifarious entity of Digital Humanities (DH). To understand the context and scope of this series, and to consider the research questions upon which the investigation is based, please view the first article here. We’ll also be referring to my online survey Hands Up for Digital Humanities – the quantitative input to this series.

Have you ever wandered through a school, college or university, and had the feeling that the walls and corridors are judging you? Their rigid architecture assessing whether or not you’ve been here before, whether you know where you’re going, whether you ‘belong’.

“The arts or the sciences?” the walls seem to ask, deliberately funnelling us this way and that. “You have to choose,” they say. “You can’t do both forever.”

And largely, we, the inhabitants, comply. So much so, that the walls and their destinations drift farther and farther apart…

The perceived divide between artists and scientists is nothing new. Indeed, as C.P. Snow declared in his 1956 epochal essay ‘The Two Cultures’; “Neither culture knows the virtues of the other; often it seems they deliberately do not want to know.” Are we really only connected through our own incongruity, or have we progressed from this position in sixty-two years?

Over the last four months, I have met some interesting people whose views and experiences are helping me interrogate this question. Let me introduce one of them now.

Boston Tea Party cafe. Plymouth’s historic Barbican. An open-plan loft-type room, high ceilings, cured floorboards, echoey but snug. I favour an upstairs booth – on the right, at the back.

I’m here to meet Garry Hunt. He was the host of the Digital Plymouth (DP) meet-up in June that I mentioned last article. Garry’s wide smile and humble manner immediately makes me feel at ease and I ask him about the DP origins.

Garry Hunt

“We’re three years in,” Garry says, taking a sip of coffee, “but it feels like we’re only just getting started. If any other meet-up in Plymouth got 120 people they’d be overjoyed, but whenever we have a Directors’ meeting, we feel we could easily be doing more. There are 5000 businesses in Plymouth. We’ve got less than 1% of who we could have…”

This earnest and ambitious attitude is reflected in Garry’s hat collection. In addition to his DP hat as one of five directors, Garry is a WordPress specialist and freelance digital designer with his main business DigLab. He also provides training and workshops through ExploreMesh, the sister organisation to Digital Plymouth, and he co-runs the brilliant BorrowDon’tBuy, a vast library of ‘things’ such as equipment and tools available for the public to borrow, free-of-charge. Garry also engages in superhero basketball and learns lessons from Taylor Swift. Check out his latest blog.

Borrow Don’t Buy

“I’ve got a lot invested in Digital Plymouth,” Garry continues. “I want it to do well and I really feel what we’re doing is good. It’s for everyone.”

“From what I’ve seen,” I say, “there’s seems to be capacity for someone from Humanities to come in and talk about their digital involvement.”

“We want talks that will educate, inform or entertain, or possibly all three. The Humanities stuff would be really interesting.”

“People underestimate the knowledge value of the Humanities,” I say, always unable to keep epistemology out of the conversation.

“Yes, but I think a lot of people do this work without realising it.”

“Absolutely,” I say, pleased to find common ground. “This is something I’m finding from my survey.”

It’s still early days with only 47 respondents so far, but we can appreciate some trends emerging already. Garry has highlighted a pertinent issue and Question 3.1 of the survey is relevant here. This question asks whether respondents had heard of Digital Humanities (DH) before engaging with the survey. Of the 15 who hadn’t heard of it, one third of these checked the option: “This is something I have already being ‘doing’ without hearing the term.”

How exciting is this?

If DH activity can still take place without being reliant on conscious application, it suggests that the ‘digital’ and the ‘humanities’ are naturally compatible entities. This bodes well for any creative writer cautiously crossing over into the technological realm.

“What about this,” Garry says, reaching for his phone. “This may be where my understanding of the Humanities might be entirely wrong,” he laughs, “but there’s a website called Below the Surface where they dredged a river in Amsterdam and catalogued it.”

He hands over his phone. “Careful with this website, you will lose hours to it.”

I start scrolling. There are pages and pages of mismatched treasures from across the ages – a tear gas grenade shell from 2000-05, a bilateral blade from 5300BC, fragments of pottery and pristine smoking pipes from the 1700s. Past-lives in high-resolution, all twinkling clean with colours like morning.

Below the Surface is an ideal example of DH in action. Especially the collaborative aspect with archaeologists, historians and engineers all working together. I wonder now if Gary has ever had direct contact with humanists or artists in his work.

“Yes, game writers.”

Ah, but game writers – whilst entirely appropriate to this research, and fascinating to me – are already in the door. So, instead I ask: “What would you say to creative writers who are interested in the whole digital world, but might feel it’s impenetrable?”

“I would say it’s definitely not. It’s a cliché but it’s true, we’re all very introverted, quiet, personal people, but if you come and talk to us and have a conversation, you’ll always find people who will want to tell you about what they do. It’s best to ask ‘what are you doing, how do you do it’. From a digital perspective, every time I hear about someone doing something a bit different, I always find it really interesting, even if I can’t do it. There’s so many ways that you can physically work together, it’s not the impenetrable force-field we may put up.”

“I think it’s partly about knowing what’s out there,” I say. “I just happened to come across the DP meet-up. I wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t been specifically researching digital events in Plymouth.”

Finding that key individual or event is one challenge, mustering the courage to actually attend something or initiate a conversation – outside of your own comfort zone – is something else entirely.

Whether due to anxiety, reluctance or obliviousness, failing to venture outside our own group could be attributed to the ‘silo effect’.

Marit Dewhurst, in her chapter ‘Nurturing the Intersections of Arts and Non-arts Disciplines’ explains: “The ‘silo effect’, whereby researchers and faculty members are contained in silos based on their field of practice, limits opportunities for a positive discourse around the arts.” And it seems no corner of academia is exempt, as Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein state in their 2010 article: “The silo mentality and viciousness of academic infighting in higher education are legendary.”

These silos could be the inevitable product of those judgemental walls and corridors; stagnating conurbations, cut off from their outdated, one-way traffic. If so, we need to start planning some serious roadworks.

I mention this issue of infrastructure to Garry: “There seems to be a general consensus from the tech people I’ve spoken to, that you’d like to have the input from the Humanities but there’s a lack of infrastructure for getting involved.”

“I don’t think it’s just a Humanities thing,” Garry says. “I think it’s a university thing, especially in Plymouth, possibly across all universities. Education prepares you for joining a workforce. Not for doing anything else with your qualifications. The way people work is going through a massive change. People need to take their skills and ask how they can use them in another way. There’s nothing that really prepares you for that.”

Interestingly, Garry didn’t go to university, and when we start chatting about his website-design training course, I wonder if this fact has contributed to his go-getting attitude.

“I’m a believer that you need to get people doing things,” Garry says. “You’ve got to physically do stuff. You don’t need to know how to do everything perfectly, you sometimes just need to know how to start. [The clients] always go away with something – we give them an actual website to build on the day, which they can go and carry on building.”

The connection between website design and the Humanities might not be instantly obvious, but there are plenty of Humanities-based businesses. Look at the tourism sector: information services, libraries, archives, and places like Literature Works, which is a registered charity and the regional literature development agency for southwest England. These are legitimate ideas for Humanists emerging from university with a graduate degree – anyone wanting to do something similar needs a website.

So how we can feed this into education? Should we incorporate business skills into every Humanities degree programme? And it’s not just skills or practice; what about products as well, both hardcopy and digital? Creative writing manifests not only in scripts, books and websites, but also in interactive online stories, apps using geolocation to personalise stories, pamphlets, zines and chapbooks. These are products that people have assembled and put out there. Why aren’t we teaching CW students to generate their own products? We not only need to develop more crossovers with industry, but with other disciplines in academia: visual art, illustration, graphic design and publishing.

The walls of schools and colleges and universities might still be judging us, but in this rendering at least, we can walk along the same corridors and occasionally end up in the same place. It’s time to set up our orange cones, don our hard hats and attempt some serious drilling.