Introduction

In this chapter we – Emma Lazenby, a filmmaker, and Karen Gray, a researcher – introduce the analogue journey method. The term ‘analogue’ has dual meanings, and both are relevant. An ‘analogue’ is a thing that is similar to, or that is used to represent, something else through the process of comparison or analogy. The analogue journey method is a novel creative analysis tool that can be used with almost any kind of qualitative or mixed- methods research data, making sense of such data by visualising them in the shape of a journey, with the end goal of communicating this sense to others. The word ‘analogue’ is also now commonly used to denote things whose means of representation is through the quantities and qualities of the physical world. This contrasts to the ‘digital’ world, in which physical quantities are processed through and represented by electrical signals. For example, analogue time is told through the movement of the minute and second hands of a clock, rather than through changing numbers on a computer screen. The analogue journey method requires analogue tools, such as paper, pens, scissors. However, its results are intended to be translated into either words or images using any media to support wider and creative dissemination of research findings. The word ‘journey’ in the name indicates that it involves information being organised and presented in a form that, while linear, is mobile and mutable – open to change.

The analogue journey method demands thoughtful connection and reconnection with the data. Its activities encourage cross- disciplinary collaboration, opening up different perspectives or helping to form different constellations of information. As illustrated in Figure 19.1, this process can also help to bring data and how we think about it into a relationship with time.

The origins of the method

In 2009 Emma was making Mother of Many – an award- winning animated film about midwifery and childbirth. Many ideas were whirling round in Emma's head, including extracts from books, birth stories, YouTube videos, and the pages of her own sketchbooks. All of these ideas and materials became simply too much to hold or to process. To make sense of them, Emma began sticking the research notes, information, images, and extracts of interviewees’ words across her living room wall.