Joy is a somewhat elusive term that is often difficult to define and often entangled with similar emotional states or ‘positive’ ways of being. We wanted to ensure that our student collaborators could share what joy meant to them. Further to this, co-defining joy as a concept was integral to our participatory and collaborative methodology and thus acted as the primary guiding activity in our creative workshops. Utilising a photo elicitation technique of general stock images, our students were asked to select an image that they felt most aligned with their understanding of, and affiliation to, joy. For example, one student described the humbling nature of the world and its connection to joy by selecting an image of the sky. When explaining its connection to joy, they said: “It’s like looking at infinity. The stars, the moon, the sun – it gives me hope.” For students, joy was also about establishing a sense of safety – a safe, calm and gentle environment and ‘calming the noise’ with an absence of shame. Joy was about nostalgia and connecting with childhood or children around us such as younger siblings. Students selected animals, community and connection. Joy was found beyond the self. Joy was found in collaboration by working together and feeling part of something bigger. 

Following our collaborative work to define joy, we moved into asking students to find an image that represents their educational experience. When asked about higher education and their university experience, little joy was to be found. Individualised, goal and achievement driven targets of grades, assessment and ‘what’s next’ stifled and squashed joy, with the exception of committed teachers and pockets of community and friendships that eased the load of educational experience(s). Students described the relationship to joy in education as an arduous and turbulent journey, citing overbearing content with courses often designed in ways that were detrimental to well being and that were juggled with the uneven terrains of students' individual lives and circumstances. Students utilised metaphors of survival, thinking about the sea, journeys, cliffs, pressure and fire and associated feelings of intensity, stress and pain. It is important to note that there were caveats here. Many students said there were ‘elements’ of joy in their education, but this was with the backdrop of difficulty. 

The second activity we did, devised and created by the student co-researchers, was our ‘battery of joy’. This was a creative way of documenting the ways in which practices, relations, environments and things were conducive to joy in education or ‘charged us up’ or if they were in fact draining and ‘squashed’ joy. To represent this, a battery was used as a metaphor to have conversations around this. Student participants could map their positive and/or negative experiences onto the + or - in their conversations on joy and utilising the battery as an elicitation device. In the context of barriers to joy or what ‘squashed’ it, students reflected upon disabling environments and the effect of these on their mental health, as well as coming to learning and identifying with mental health conditions and/or disabilities. Support for this and care for students often felt insufficient and the ways in which we teach, learn and assess are not always done in inclusive and thus joyful ways. Students cited the bureaucracy of learning and teaching, feelings of disappointment and hopelessness, too many deadlines and not enough time to simply learn in their own styles and at their own pace, forced to fit into a particular mould instead of being celebrated as students with diverse bodies and minds. Students described an absence of fun in teaching, uncertainty about the future, poor communication or unanswered questions and broader structural constraints such as financial struggle. These all squashed joy in the educational experience. On the other side of the coin, students celebrated what charged them up and made them feel enjoyment in university life and their educational experience. They described teamwork and collaboration with friends, coursemates and supporting or mentoring others. They saw creativity as joyful. Learning something new. Being outdoors and learning beyond the university. Food. Culture. Religion. Discovering or rediscovering themselves as an autonomous learner and confidence in their ability, supported by validation by those who teach and support their learning experience. To find out more, please visit the following links:

Battery of Joy - Workshop Results

Interactive Battery of Joy - Add Your Thoughts and Opinions Here!

The central component of our creative workshops was providing sufficient time space and materials to allow students to bring creativity and facilitate conditions for joy through creating, connecting and producing material artefacts together. Our student participants and co-researchers also took time to sit, to chat and to create an artefact that may or may not have been related to joy. Stories and biographies were documented, political statements were captured and the weight of inaccessible and hierarchical systems were outlined to demonstrate the ways in which many of us don’t fit. As creative and participatory methodologists, we know that such ways of working through art-based tools facilitate a route into such strengths of feelings.

 As we brought our workshops to a close, due to the weight of the content, the emotions in the room and the participatory processes, we sought to consolidate and check in with all student participants and co-researchers at the end of the session. We did this via our ‘jar of joy’. This was a sweetie style glass jar with a paper tag that read ‘jar of joy’ where students were asked to think of a word or statement to reflect their feelings as a result of participation from the workshops. It is important to note that academic leads were not present for these sessions, as requested by the student lead researchers to challenge power imbalances and to enhance student voice. Examples from the jar of joy were statements and words such as ‘aglow’, ‘expression’, ‘inspired’, ‘refreshed’, ‘I don’t feel alone’, ‘I feel valued’, ‘relaxed’, ‘I feel encouraged’, ‘I feel heard’ and simply, ‘I feel better’. And what this does is speak to the very notion of joy - the elation of the right relation - collaborative, participatory, distributed power and creating a flexible and open space in which creativity and joy can be felt in a way in which people learn together. Whatever that learning might be.