Narrative 1
Happy Objects within Reach
Two figures – perhaps a young man and young woman – walk along briskly, rounding the street corner. They seem to be engaged in the kind of happy and easy conversation shared between friends on a favourite topic. I don’t know what they are talking about, but while looking at them I notice that the young woman’s foot kicks out as she walks. A light breeze seems to catch her ponytail just as she is about to step off the curb. There is something about both these details that reminds me of my childhood friend, Allison. But, of course, it isn’t her. It could be someone like her, though. At the same corner, a car has stopped and another pedestrian begins to cross the road. Or is it a road? There’s only one vehicle in sight, so maybe this part of the city has been designed around foot traffic. It might be one of those streets that becomes pedestrianised on weekends. Across from me, I can see someone else who is also overlooking the scene from above. This person is sitting alone, bringing something up to their face with their hand. Maybe they are getting some fresh air during a lunch break, feeling content to let their mind wander as they watch the hustle and bustle below. But from where I sit, it is harder to guess what the rest of the people in this scene are doing. Are those two friends being followed by the person behind them, or no? A bit further in the distance, it would be easy to miss the shadowy figure leaning over, reaching for something that is obscured from my view. Should I be concerned for the person on the right, the one with her hair tied back in a bun? The way the light hits her silhouette, I cannot tell whether she is coming towards the brightness of the busy corner or heading away from me, towards that shadowed area behind.
I press a small pinch of sticky tack under the foot of another paper figurine, then gently fold it at the knees and elbows. My quick experiment seems to be working: in what must be less than 2 minutes, I have a tiny cityscape of laser-cut shapes and paper people built on my desk. I think these materials will work well to help participant ideas and speculative scenarios come alive at the workshop, even for those who might not arrive feeling confident in their own creativity. Even now, when everything in this scene is made of purple construction paper, there seems to be enough detail in the blocky shapes to trigger some associations and ideas, once placed in relation to each other. I’ll be interested to see whether introducing more colours feels more inspirational or takes away from the cohesiveness. In any case, the final version won’t be purple, which is a colour that has not been included in the branding identity for this project. I have to be careful not to waste the good paper on early tests because there definitely won’t be time to go purchase more before the event.
Lisa had shared some pictures of model-making kits by the Japanese architect Terada Naoki when we were brainstorming materials for a previous workshop on another project, but we had gone in another direction. I have the website up on my computer screen again now. The kits are beautifully simple, yet so specific and situated in a context. In the version I’m looking at, the styles of things like street signage and vendor carts seem to immediately place you in Tokyo, with visual details that somehow evoke the other senses too. They are captivating. I have been wondering if I could create something similar for this workshop. At the end of the event, we will be making models of public spaces, focused on designing them to be safer for women and girls. I wonder what details I will need to include to make these modelling materials feel like they are specifically for Melbourne; how they might add a particular excitement for the people who know this city so well. I have only been here for a few years, so most of the participants will know it in an intimate way better than I do. But maybe some of the unique features of this place stand out to me more as a newcomer because they seem unfamiliar.
Following this inspiration, I already spent too much time re-creating the details of a Melbourne tram carriage in Illustrator last night. I settled on the small Z3-class model, more distinctive than the modern D-class or E-class series. I was drawn to its boxy structure and angled display screen. While looking up reference images, I learned it debuted in Melbourne in the mid 1970s and 80s. Apparently the original designers had been inspired by the trams in Scandinavia, liking their European look. Half a century later, this inspiration has reverberated into my own mental image of the Melbourne cityscape. The Z3 is also the tram model that runs from my apartment to the university and I know it best. Almost before I can see it in my mind, I can hear the sounds of the bell and tracks rumbling along. I can feel my shoulders draw up slightly in response to the painful screech of the ageing double doors flying open and slamming shut at each stop. A smell that is both distinctive but also indistinct enough that I wouldn’t be able to describe it. To me, this tram is an iconic part of my experience of this city. It is also one of the urban spatial typologies of central interest in this research project, so it is, in fact, relevant to include in the materials for the collaborative model-making. I hope the details in my rendering will help evoke these senses for participants, to prompt their own embodied memories of how it really feels, sounds, smells for each of them to travel through this specific place. That seems like it might make a difference to the conversation, albeit a very tiny difference. In actuality, it would probably do just as well to summon a general notion of public transport using a rectangle and some wheels, but that risks being a bit uninspiring too. But since I was working late last night anyway, I gave in to the temptation to customise. I feel less guilty about wasting time on trivial extra things like this outside business hours.
Open hours have come back around again and now I am the first to arrive in the digital fabrication lab this morning. It’s a sunny day and I am feeling refreshed. I flip a switch on the wall and the fume exhaust system whirrs to life, promising to take any toxic contaminants released by my experiments elsewhere. The first laser cutter I ever used was an old finicky model. Combined with my inexperience back then, I usually set whatever I was cutting on fire at least once. So I learned to stand by vigilantly with my fingers poised above the emergency stop button. It has never happened in the years I have been using these newer machines. But I still strike that stance. Rather than entering a state of hyper-awareness, I let myself be mesmerised by the stream of light slicing intricate patterns, listening to the soft thumping sound as it changes direction on the axle. In fact, during these fast-paced projects I really enjoy these moments of standing still, getting surrounded by the now-familiar smoky smell of an idea becoming something I can hold in my hands, something tangible I can hand over to someone else.
But I do not have endless time to spare. Since this pattern is more intricate than the other workshop materials and will take longer to cut, I go straight to a colour we will be using at the actual event, forgoing the test run in purple. I spread the construction paper into a fan shape on the counter to pick out a colour from within our project branding palette. For some reason, my hand settles on the hot pink. It is a deep, vibrant hue, almost fluorescent. It feels ... radical.
I surprise myself – I would normally never consider ‘making something pink’ as a meaningful feminist tactic. In fact, making something pink for use in an event about women, girls, and gender equality is a design choice that would probably send my eyes rolling. It would be easy for me to dismiss someone else’s project as woefully inadequate and superficial from seeing images of pink workshop materials alone. Feminism does not have to be feminine, after all. That is the least important part, if even relevant at all. But now, holding this paper, I am wondering why I think the workshop materials should not be overtly, explicitly feminine. Or at least why my knee-jerk reaction is that pink materials will mean these issues will be taken less seriously or that pink materials might somehow detract from this workshop. Or worse, somehow detract from the crucially important real-world implications of this project.
***
My little sister was watching me and waiting patiently for her turn at the piano when her eyes widened. She had just noticed something seriously amiss which the rest of us seemed to have overlooked: a pink ribbon in my hair. She grasped my mom’s arm, but my mom just smiled down at her and put a finger to her lips. They looked at each other, forming a quiet agreement. My sister’s deep concern on my behalf gave way to mischievous delight and she smiled too. Her wait became a nervous but exciting period of suspense. What would happen when she finds out? Still unaware, I looked up and down between the keys and the sheet music in front of me. My sister watched, tensing and squirming in her seat each time my braid fell back and forth over my shoulder, sometimes dangerously swinging into the periphery of my view. Yet for me, the ribbon remained in the background, dangling nearby or lightly pressing against my back, but somehow never catching my attention. I was focused on practising the right notes.
Supposedly it was not until we were back home, getting ready for bed that night, that I finally found the ribbon. I do not recall how I reacted, but years later my mom told us this story and by then we could all laugh like the two of them did that day. She insisted she had only forced me to wear pink that one time. I imagine I would have retaliated by wearing my favourite outfit to school the next day – green sweatpants and a black hockey jersey – to try to counteract the reputational damage caused by my proximity to that girly bow. I am sure my tomboy commitment to never wearing pink would only have been strengthened by once having to wear it against my will. From then on, I kept myself as far from that ribbon as possible. However, it still got plenty of use as part of my sister’s favourite dress-up outfit: a purple leotard and pink tutu. After any given day, the ribbon was put away in the same drawer in the bathroom. That is where it was always kept, even long after my sister outgrew playing dress-up, even over years as we both came back home for visits as young adults.
Maybe if I could go visit my mom today, it would still be there. Alzheimer’s is quickly eroding most of her memories, even her happiest ones. But perhaps if she held the ribbon, and all it contains, it could help her tell that story again. Or at least help her access some fleeting sense of experiences we had shared. I used to want this distance between me and the ribbon, but now I wish we could be closer together again.
***
With a mechanical flourish, the laser twirls around the final cut in the template and returns to its resting position at the top left-hand corner of the cutting bed. I open the lid and reach into this space, carefully peeling up the masking tape that held the paper steady while it transformed from a simple sheet into an intricate design. It flutters in my hand as I carry it to a tabletop nearby. The moment of truth: will it support itself as a stable 3D form? Amazingly, all the notches seem to line up on this first go, so it is looking promising. One by one, I fold and guide various paper tabs as they lightly snap into place. I feel a little surge of excitement. It looks great. Whatever you might be busy doing, whoever you are, this hot pink tram cannot go unnoticed in the background: it demands your attention.
The details are a spot-on miniature depiction of the trams I see every day from my apartment and from the office, but the colour hints at an alternative possibility. What else would need to change for something so feminised like this to make it into our infrastructure? I’m holding it in my hand, but I am imagining what it would be like to actually see this tram, life size, rumbling down the street, announcing that we are doing things differently now. The intricacies of the laser-cut model – its tiny side mirrors, functional doors, iconic silhouette – make this little daydream feel somehow less outlandish. I almost want it to be a real thing.
I place it on top of the pile of leftover construction paper, gather my materials, and march upstairs to our shared office. As always in the final weeks leading up to one of our events, I am walking quickly, but now I am also more aware of my movements, careful not to let the breeze whipping through the doorway send the tram tumbling off the stack of paper. ‘Look at this!’ (or maybe ‘Look at her!’) I exclaim as I walk in, holding it proudly out in front of me. Obligingly, the pink tram is met with small cheers and tiny applause from my teammates, who look up from their desks for a moment to share in my excitement.
***
I think there were about 70 of us in the room, but I remember it being quiet. The tone was formal; there were black tablecloths on all the tables and a team of support staff in matching black uniforms. The space was cavernous, with beige walls, high ceilings, and an audience of mostly white men. There were no windows. Even though we were seated at round tables in groups, we would not directly interact with the people around us throughout the day. In fact, at least half the people at each table spent the day with their backs turned to the others, in order to face the presentations from sector experts on stage at the front of the room.
The conference had begun promptly at 8:30am with a larger-than-life, booming video call from a British expert in the field. His work represents the counterterrorism and surveillance industry standard and I was impressed with the amazing feats of engineering and counterterrorism measures he presented that you would never notice as a passenger, like shatter-resistant glass. But soon I found myself trailing off, wondering if it was more straightforward to make a space shatter-resistant than it was to make it harassment-resistant.
Going into a coffee break before our presentation, my colleague and I started to distribute some eye-catching folders with more information and supplemental material about our research. This conference could be a good networking opportunity. It was clear that our research was a bit of an outlier on the agenda. Most of the tables were empty as everyone headed to the lobby for a final cup of coffee and refreshments. But at one table a stocky man with a fully shaved head looked up from his phone to ask me something about catering. I did not know any more than he did as I was not a member of the event staff either. A similar mistake had happened earlier in the day with another conference attendee. I wondered if it was because my outfit was mostly black.I glanced around at the staff from the conference centre quietly rushing around in the background, doing the invisible labour to ensure the conference attendees could present their work without a hitch.
After the folders were on the tables, I also headed out to the lobby to get a quick coffee and write a last-minute note on the script for my part of our presentation. Everyone else was filing back in when I saw an older man approaching from across the hall. He was walking with the elevated, busy energy of someone arriving late between important commitments. His demeanour was friendly as he too asked me something about event logistics. Again, I do not recall exactly what he asked, but it was clear that for the third time I had been perceived as convention centre staff instead of a fellow conference attendee. Again I found myself explaining that I did not know; I was presenting in the next session. We were both swept up in the inertia of his late arrival and were somehow speaking at the same time. I was not sure if he had heard my answer to his question, but he spotted my nametag and interrupted himself: ‘Ah, Hannah! Will you be distributing kisses to everyone in the next session?’ I had been glancing down to gather my papers before heading back into the conference, but my eyes snapped upwards to meet his. I saw a twinkling smile. Kisses? It was such a bizarre question, yet exclaimed with such a happy delivery that I was not offended or even uncomfortable, just baffled. Before I could respond ‘No, I am presenting research about sexual harassment’, a true member of the conference centre staff, wearing all black like me, gently let us know that the next session was starting and ushered us inside.
The man had not introduced himself but as he addressed the audience for his presentation, I realised that I knew his name. He was a senior researcher, a full professor, and the only other academic at this industry conference. In the end, he was also the only other person at the conference to bring up gender as a risk factor in his presentation. It was a small bullet point, but I was happy he mentioned it. Perhaps it gave us more credibility. We were the last to present and although the other talks had led to short but lively Q&A sessions, our presentation was met with tired silence. But it was the end of the day. It wasn’t long before the quiet pause was broken by the footsteps of the conference convenor joining us on stage. He relayed a polite thank you on behalf of everyone before wrapping up the program. We all gathered our things from the tables and filed out to the lobby for drinks.
Later, some seemed to have made plans with each other to carry on their networking at the casino nearby. I had accidentally walked out behind them in the same direction and worried for a moment that perhaps they thought I was trying to tag along uninvited. But no one seemed to notice when I broke off from the back of the group at the tram stop while they kept going. When the tram arrived, I found a seat by the window. It was getting dark outside, making it harder to see much beyond my own reflection in the glass. I noticed that I was still wearing my nametag, which reminded me of the strange encounter in the lobby earlier. Still baffled, I found myself forensically piecing together what could have prompted the joke about me kissing the other conference attendees. I looked more closely at the sticker on my chest. Maybe, if he were glancing quickly at my messy handwriting, he could have interpreted ‘XX’ to be written in the smaller letters under Hannah. That was not what I had written there, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was just as happy to let the joke go as he had been to tell it. He was an older man and his outdated sense of humour was just a harmless relic he had transplanted into the present-future where it did not belong anymore. After all, I had really enjoyed the conference and I wasn’t willing to make something small into a bigger deal than it needed to be. Although, in some ways, it felt like that misplaced joke from history belonged at the present-day conference more than I did. I peeled off my nametag, crumpled it into a tiny ball, and dropped it into my bag. The last thing I needed at that moment was for a stranger to see my name and use it as an excuse to force a conversation, corner me, or even follow me off the tram. This had happened before with forgotten name tags. But this time, thankfully, it was just a quiet ride back.
I used the quiet to remember another day I had spent at the very same conference centre about 6 months prior. That day, I had been forewarned that I was entering a contentious space. I had been hired to conduct a large-scale workshop with a sexual and reproductive health organisation. The organisation had closed operations for the day to enable everyone to come together to co-create their strategic vision for the next 5 years. This contract came with warnings by the new CEO that tensions were high and the organisation had become extremely siloed. I had braced myself for a difficult day. And yet once we were all in the space, doing the activities and using the materials provided, the energy had shifted.
The materials invited us to perform another side of ourselves (during the icebreaker, participants were invited to try out different collaboration roles and mindsets, through ‘try it on’ lanyards that they could take on and off throughout the day such as active listening, vulnerability, optimism, etc.). They were invited to disagree. As I sat there remembering the difference in how it felt to deal with contention in the same setting, I was glad that my practice involved more workshops than research presentations. Workshop encounters were different.
***
With the pink tram temporarily placed on the shelf behind me, it is time to develop and iterate on the other participatory model-making materials I have started. Unlike the gorgeous model kits by Takedo that had served as inspiration, the goal of this workshop is not to try to reproduce the city spaces of Melbourne just as they are now. I am aware that these materials also have to do something more: we want to evoke but also re-imagine the possibilities of these spaces. We want to re-make and unmake these spaces to be less exclusionary, to be safer for more people. A hot pink paper tram will not change the city, but in combination with more materials, I hope everyone will be well-equipped to chase a promise of something else or at least become open to wondering where a promise of something else could take us. Glancing around at the other things on my desk, I see the sticky notes reminding me to check on the other crucial aspects of the upcoming workshop:
‘WTC’ – Welcome to Country – we have been coordinating with the Koorie Heritage Trust to coordinate. If no one is available, we will do an acknowledgement ourselves…
‘Therapist’ – this is a new role we are trialling at the workshop, someone who will participate alongside everyone else but also be on standby if anyone needs more support. It is out of an abundance of caution (we have been making many other efforts to try to create a safe space), but topics about gender, safety, and public spaces can affect people in ways they do not necessarily expect. Also, the people and things you encounter at the workshop can also affect you in ways you do not expect.
‘Coffee cart/catering’ – another member of the team is tasked with securing our caffeine for the day. We know how important coffee is for a successful workshop. We are expecting between 60 and 90 participants and we will be spending a full day together. Maintaining energy and momentum is a big part of our approach.
‘Voucher’ – for those who will be joining the workshop outside of their paid work capacity, we want to make sure we find a way to reimburse them for their time. Thankfully, the details of this are sorted out by the project coordinator. With all the coordination I am doing for this event, I am very glad not to be doing that paperwork. Most people will be joining us in their paid capacity. There will be public servants, engineers, designers, activists, and various public service providers, alongside youth activists and community members with lived experience.
All of these ‘to do’ items are essential for hosting and taking care of the participants. But tonight my focus is on the making materials we will use when we finally all come together. I am reworking some of the methods our lab has used before, a bit of a twist on an architectural charrette. Some topics on the agenda will also require new approaches. For those who are new to designing, what will they need in order to construct, rethink, and envision safer futures? Many of them will also be new to the gender lens, so there is a lot to consider for this event to be meaningful and productive.
***
I pushed the bathroom door open and hustled into a stall where I could hide for a moment. I had just abruptly left a session of Research methods and processes, a core requirement. Already about a month into my Master’s degree program in critical design, I now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had made a grave mistake. Prior to that moment, I had felt more bemused than anything. I had explained to myself that the lecturers were probably just catering to other students who did not have a research background, they wouldn’t want to overwhelm anyone brand new to this area. I could understand that. But then it felt serious. That was not research. Disturbingly, it also did not seem to be design, which made the situation all the more dire. I wasn’t confused by these ‘research methods’ we were learning, I was horrified. None of these methods could possibly produce any verifiable evidence. If you followed these approaches, you would have no way of backing up your claims. This ‘research’ wouldn’t stand a chance against the lightest scrutiny in the real world. All my prior training in neuroscience had taught me how to scan reports, case studies, and articles to spot possible tiny infractions from the most robust application and execution of the scientific method. Similarly, I had been taught that any deviations or oversights in your own procedures could invalidate the results and you would have nothing. Or worse, you would have produced research that was misleading or inaccurate.
And the methods being described in this class were not tiny infractions. Another wave of incredulity struck me as I thought about what was still happening in the lecture hall just beyond the door. I had escaped temporarily because I thought I might become visibly upset. It was too late. I had already left my job and moved to another country to pursue this degree. I had been so excited to learn the fundamental drawing and rendering skills I would need to develop new products and devices that could make a demonstrable positive impact on other people’s lives. I could take this leap because at the end, I would have the concrete skills to get straight back to work again. Not all design was about trivial things like home decorating, after all. But somehow, instead of learning these core skills, I seemed to have stumbled into a degree that was just going to be a useless and unaffordable waste of time. I leaned against the sickly, pale-green stall and looked up at a small, flaking spot of water damage that was developing on the ceiling. I wondered how I could walk away, cut my losses, and withdraw. But as I weighed up the options, it was clear that leaving the degree early was the only choice that could possibly be worse for my career and my savings than staying to finish it. I would have to.
***
I am both excited and a bit overwhelmed by the diversity of participants we are expecting at this workshop. I imagine everyone will be arriving with different expectations of the day: some are drawn to co-design for its promise of concrete outcomes. Others for amplifying voices that would normally be missing in decision-making processes. Some will be outspoken feminist activists, others will be considering how gender inequity relates to their work and life for the first time. Some participants will be cis women or trans women, some will be non-binary, some will be cis men, some will be young, some disabled. I have not been leading the recruitment process for this workshop, but I have been worried about who we might be forgetting to include. I have also been worried about tokenistic inclusion.
But at the moment, one of the things I am preoccupied by is thinking about participants who will be new to creative methods. I have heard horror stories from other design-led projects where public sector employees felt so alienated by the creative methods introduced by embedded designers that they took sick leave to avoid the distress caused by unwelcome design approaches. This is not the kind of disruption I want to cause through this workshop. Instead I want all participants, regardless of design experience, to be positively affected by the workshop materials. I want them to feel excited to build something together and to feel proud of the result: to feel compelled by the successful physical manifestation of their collective ideas. If they are willing to take on the risk of challenging conversations, I at least want them to feel happy about their contribution to what we create together. Deviating is hard enough without also questioning your own creativity along the way.
For this event, I have planned an ambitious 6-in-1 workshop structure, almost like a trade show. It is taking place mid-way through the project, building on findings from previous phases of the research. We have a sense of the wide variety of stakeholders, many of whom hold contrasting ideas about how to frame the problem as well as conflicting ideologies on how best to move forward. The issues at the core of this feminist work exist on multiple levels: collective action needs to urgently address problems that are the products of a sexist system, while also addressing the wider drivers and aspects of the sexist system itself. Some participants will be seeking to do one more than the other. Both these orientations require different approaches and methods. So I will be leaving the choice to them. Well, at least a bounded choice. There will be a variety of topics and approaches, and they can choose to join the one that most intuitively aligns with their own motivations for participating. My hope is this will welcome a more diverse range of perspectives to the discussion, while exposing participants to other ways of conceptualising this issue without demanding that they embrace all of them. Half of the workshops will involve the charrette-style model-making method we have been perfecting as a lab, so I am tweaking the materials to suit this project. In previous iterations, I had been adamant that the human paper figurines needed to reflect a diversity of real skin tones. I did not want racial diversity to be something that was not addressed head on in the visions of futures. However, in looking over images of previous workshops, the shiny, happy visions of diverse futures took on a saccharine tone – it seemed that through making these images of diversity, we had, in fact, completely bypassed the real-world complexity of this work. This was an unexpected downside. The happiness and almost magic-like quality of materials could affect us in ways that were distracting. This could actually prevent us from engaging deeply with the harder, unhappier topics. In offering symbols of diversity like the PRIDE flag and the Aboriginal flag, were participants just making visions of what they thought was the ‘right’ answer? Or were they genuinely shifting their assumptions and expectations about where we needed to go?
I am not sure. So this time I am aiming for ambiguity. I search online for reference imagery and cringe to myself as I go down the same list of demographic intersections as last time, trying to make sure I have not missed anybody. I am especially careful to make sure that participants I know will be joining us on the day will feel represented in the materials. But this is exactly the tokenistic process I do not want for the participants. So I try to deliberately obscure the distinct demographic categories I have been searching. Instead of generic human shapes, I opt to hand-draw a range of shapes and silhouettes, so that the paper people look more like individuals you might encounter as you move through the city, maybe reminding participants of a certain person they really know. I carry over the hand-drawn quality to the patterns and shapes of the non-human materials as well. I like that the aesthetic does not obscure the human labour which goes into producing these materials. They came from somewhere, which maybe means the origin is more open to critique.
Some of the figures I generate really quickly. Others I spend more time considering. All of the figures are drawn as individuals, except for one. I have outlined a silhouette of a large man conjoined with the hand of a small child. This is a subtle change, but I am aware that it is in response to earlier phases of the research where women’s issues were consistently equated with parenting and caregiving responsibilities. While it is objectively true that women are still disproportionately responsible for caregiving, I feel like I need to gently trouble this stereotype. Anyone unhappy can simply snip the figures apart with a pair of scissors on the day. I’m not sure I can identify the emotion I feel about this possible participant rebellion. On the one hand, the unexpected aspects of workshop encounters are what I look forward to the most – when the materials get used in ways I never intended. As much time as I spend carefully curating and bringing new ideas, research findings, and materials into reach, my intentions do not dictate actual use. Participants will always be drawn towards or away from these materials in different ways than I am. There is a small element of risk to overtly bringing my personal touch to this practice. Someone might be outraged that we would focus on fathers or male caregivers when the vast majority of caregiving responsibilities fall on women. And yet, I know that there is no way to fully remove myself from these materials, so it almost seems more ethical to make the connection explicit.
After drawing dozens and dozens of people and other materials. I pause to consider what else I can bring to the table. Or rather, what else I will be leaving on the tables for everyone to use. I cannot be at all 6 tables at once on the day. Purposefully, they won’t be watching me at the front of the room, presenting my expert opinion. They’ll be turned towards each other, oriented towards their shared visions. I hope I have struck the right balance of ambiguity so that the models they make will challenge the orientation I bring to this work. I also hope the ambiguity in the materials is evocative or provocative enough to trigger their creativity and inspiration, but also open-ended and spacious enough that they can easily forge a path I would not expect. I will have to wait to find out how my intentions extend into the actual event.