Session 1:
Take The
action!
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR? Before you can ‘love the neighbour’ you will probably never meet, a good place to start might be to get to know the neighbour you can meet! At the end of this session, you’ll select a ‘neighbour’ that you and someone else in the group will interview in the coming week. All the people who have been selected for these interviews in the parish have been told that somebody from this group will be in touch with them this week to talk to them about their lives; their hopes, fears, what they think about, how they live, what makes them happy and so on. The people have been carefully selected and will have interesting stories to tell; maybe they are someone who has recently moved to Ireland from another country, maybe they are an older person with a long history to share, maybe they are someone relatively well known in your community. Whoever you select will have their story to tell and will want to tell it. Your job is to get the most out of them; try to get to the ‘heart’ of the person as opposed to just what’s going on in their heads or in their day to day lives. You really have free reign (within reason) in terms of the questions you might ask. The important thing is to make sure you record the interview as well as you can. It probably would be no harm to also take some notes! An audio or video recording is fine. If you’re doing an audio recording, make sure to take a photo or two of the person you’re interviewing. The following are some of the questions you might ask: Background questions: How long have you been living in this community? What do you like about it? What do you not like so much about it? What’s their current family situation?
Opinion and feeling questions: What changes would you make to the community? What would you do differently if you were in charge? How do you feel living here? What are your hopes for the future? What are your fears? Justice questions: What makes you angry about our world? Have you witnessed climate change in your life, do you think? Because sessions 3, 4 and 5 focus a good bit on climate change as a justice issue, it would be really helpful to get a sense of what your interviewee thinks about this issue – this might mean unpacking with them a little bit around climate change. The interview shouldn’t take any longer than about 40 minutes. Probably the best arrangement is that one person interviews and one person records/take notes. At the end of the session, record your own reactions to the interview there and then, or as soon after as possible. How did you feel interviewing or taking the notes? Did you hear anything that challenged or surprised you? Did you enjoy the experience? Do you feel you got to know the person you were interviewing a little bit better? What did you learn from the experience? This recording of your reaction is essential for Session 2! It’s also essential as a way of journaling on the experience! Finally, ideally it would be better to get the interview done sooner rather than later in the week to allow the programme facilitators come back to you for your footage for Session 2 and also to allow you some time to journal on the experience. So in terms of ‘play back’ for Session 2; aim to get a good five minute session ready for next week’s meeting to play back to the rest of the group! Good luck with it. LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION! etc. etc.