inner u

Hey

I realised I never posted this to the blog…

This is my experience of Inner U. Before going to the event I actually found myself quite nervous, despite the rhetoric that this was an event in which everyone should feel comfortable to be themselves in every possible way. I think the group, myself included, overanalysed the importance of appearance at this particular event, I was worried I wouldn’t look ‘different’ enough so decided I would just dress how I normally would and forget about trying to make a statement with my clothing. When we initially got there I found the vibe slightly unnerving, didn’t know where to stand, how to dance what to do… I found myself more conscious of the rules than in normal London clubs, worried I wouldn’t fit in or I would look out of place. I ended up really enjoying the night in general and totally relaxing, however in terms of the intervention I had a different experience.

When preparing for the intervention, I was initially worried, like I said in the ‘transcript of the intervention discussion’, that nobody would care what we were doing and we would get either ignored or brushed off by people who just wanted to enjoy the night. In the end, I found the exact opposite. As the group were setting up the intervention I was approached by a man (let’s call him Sam) who was initially very friendly, but when he asked if I was part of the ‘group over there’ who were setting up the picnic, and I responded yes, his attitude changed completely. He seemed practically furious about what we were doing there, he picked apart our entire intervention and said that what we were doing was disgusting and ruining not just the event but people like us were ruining London. I was completely shocked at first and didn’t know quite what to say, but then ended up going into a pretty deep conversation with him about his life and struggles being himself accepted in nightlife and in life in general.

In preparing for this, and looking at it only in terms of our group project, I feel we had missed the point of this event all together. After speaking to Sam I came to understand that this event was not just one to express who you are, and all about inclusivity, it was actually for all the people who feel they are outsiders, and that London nightlife is so exclusive that they are not accepted. His view was that we came about this project completely the wrong way (bearing in mind that I didn’t fully go into the rationale behind our project and simply said we were looking at inclusivity and exclusivity in nightlife). In his strongly worded opinion, our intervention was diminishing the people at Inner U, and their struggles, to a university project. I explained to him that we were not coming at this from a journalistic perspective, not trying to belittle anyone or reduce the event or the people there to a narrow perspective of what we thought this night meant. Me and Sam ended up getting along very well and spent the rest of the night together. He maintained his view on what we were doing there as a group, but after explaining more behind our rationale and that we were not trying to offend anyone he understood more. He said that each person had an amazing story of why they were there and if we had come to a number of Inner U events and got to know the people we would have gained a much better experience and anecdotes to use for our project, we came there as outsiders hoping to gain an insight, however the real insight would have come if we became insiders.

Emile suggested before the intervention that ‘I really don’t think it should be about us; we are going to a place where people seek to be included. We have literally a pool of people that have experience of what we are interested in; they know boundaries from first-hand experience. Why are we looking to provoke people?’ I think more concern and attention should have been given to this. I’m not actually sure what was gained from the picnic intervention as its not on the blog and I couldn’t make it to the group meetings last week but I thought it was important to share my experience of Inner U, and the perspective I gained.

Sorry for the long post. X