In Isolation: a pilot in arts, research and care
I present In Isolation, a participatory arts and research project on isolation booths in English schools, a practice that affects around 8% of secondary pupils every week yet remains almost entirely unregulated and untracked. We know it happens. What we don't know is what it's actually like from the inside, and that gap is what the project set out to understand. Working with theatre-maker Ned Glasier and Young Vic Taking Part, we brought together young people with lived experience of isolation as paid Artist Researchers, who commissioned and built miniature model boxes reimagining the booths, the way a theatre designer builds a set in miniature before it exists full-size. I describe the most surprising thing we found: that we learnt more about isolation by asking about joy, belonging and freedom than by asking about isolation directly, and that the making itself turned out to be the data. As a health economist trained to measure things, I reflect on what it meant to work without a control group or an instrument, what I learnt about my own research practice from producers, designers and care workers I'd never have met otherwise, and why some of the most important things happen in the spaces you can't measure.
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IX5vGlPg7vuoQgpG4YJP3bzn18pff68FE3-R6FvlUic/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IX5vGlPg7vuoQgpG4YJP3bzn18pff68FE3-R6FvlUic/preview?usp=sharing)
King's Culture | King’s Culture | King’s College London
<em>British Educational Research Journal</em> | BERA Journal | Wiley Online Library
High court upholds use of isolation booths in schools in England
The Difference Education Charity
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