My work involves using visual arts and narrative to explore women's lives; I also use creative writing and oral history in order to engage communities in arts practice, community histories and co-production. I was involved in the writing element of the ‘Imagine’ project, working with three writing groups in Rotherham. I never imagined that emotions would play such a pivotal role in this research project. Sara Ahmed (2004) describes emotions as ‘involving bodily processes of affecting and being affected by objects and things’ (p.208) and thinking about those objects can bring up certain feelings of pain, anger or happiness.

In academic social science, emotions have ‘historically been associated with the irrational and quite opposed to the objective scientific search for knowledge’ (Holland, 2007, p.196). However, in the last decade or so, sociologists have recognised that ethnographic research cannot be clinical and detached from human emotions. As Stodulka (2014) argues: ‘Ethnographers’ emotions are valuable data when conducting research with marginalised communities. Ethnographers’ emotions contribute to, rather than compromise his or her understanding and theorising of our interlocutors’ local worlds’ (p.84).

My role in the writing group was participatory. I took part in the reading and writing of poetry and sharing my own experiences with the group. As someone who has worked in the Rotherham community for a long time, I know that when you interact with people, there will be a reciprocal relationship of human feelings. Godwin et al (2001) argue that ‘emotions are part of the “stuff” connecting human beings to each other and the world around them’ (Petray, 2012, p.556). Sara Ahmed (2004) states: ‘Emotions are associated with women, who are represented as “closer” to nature’; she argues that ‘some emotions are elevated as signs of cultivation, whilst others remain “lower” as signs of weakness’ (p.3).

Writing connects ordinary women and gives them the opportunity to articulate feelings not expressed or shared before. We can say ‘emotions do things’ – they move us but also connect us with others. I argue that emotions help people with ‘meaning making’, and offer different experiences of the world through a different lens.