WHAT CHARACTERISES LYN’S HOUSE?
This is our central question.
In the research so far, members of the community have been invited to express their experience of Lyn’s House, and what’s most important to them about it. There have been several key themes which have emerged.
Key themes
• Welcome and hospitality
• Mattering
• An unusual, contrastive space
• Food
• Something sacred or sacramental
• Transformation
• Communication and connectedness
• Joy
These themes seem to be equally significant for members of the community who don’t have a learning disability, and for those who do.
Welcome and hospitality
The theme of welcome and hospitality comprises a sense in people’s contributions of acceptance, of a space where it’s possible to be yourself without putting on a ‘face’, of ‘a welcome which is more than just “Hi”’. ‘Welcome and hospitality’ also seems to indicates an experience of both contributing and receiving, of serving and being served – in the regular shared meals in Lyn’s House, but also in a wider sense. This theme also includes experiences of being attended to, listened to, understanding and being understood – and of counting, somehow.
Mattering
The notion of ‘counting’ bridges into the theme of mattering. Our data suggests that ‘mattering’ expresses a sense of the uniqueness and importance of each person in Lyn’s House and the time taken to get to know each other and to find out what’s important to each person.
People felt it involved the experience of being asked ‘How are you’ by someone who really wants to know. It also seemed to include an experience of agency and choice, particularly for members of Lyn’s House with learning disabilities.
An unusual or contrastive space
Our data suggests that Lyn’s House is an unusual or contrastive space which involves a striking experience of acceptance and freedom to be oneself.
People have said that they experience Lyn’s House as ‘surprising’, ‘unexpected’ and ‘unique’, and – for some – it’s a ‘non-competitive space’ in the ‘very competitive context’ of university life.
Food
Food is big part of Lyn’s House and this is reflected in the data.
The ways people spoke about food in Lyn’s House also crossed over into the theme of welcome and hospitality.
Food seems to be a way many people are able to contribute to life and gatherings in Lyn’s House. It also appears to represent a broader giving of oneself.
Some of the ways people talked about food in Lyn’s House hinted at an experience of ‘communion’ – in the regular practice of sharing food and the wider experience of being together ‘in the ways we are together in Lyn’s House’.
Something sacred or sacramental
The language of ‘communion’ leads into the theme of ‘something sacred or sacramental’.
This encompasses some of the more explicit things people said about the place and experience of prayer, or prayerfulness, as a feature of Lyn’s House – while noting the freedom to pray in many different ways, and choice about participating in prayer or not.
The notion of the sacred, or sacramental, also includes material in the data suggesting something more implicit: the quality of relationships; the kind of space which Lyn’s House holds; ‘a spirituality that isn’t front-of-house…’
Transformation
Transformation describes what people communicated in the research about belonging to Lyn’s House: that it can involve moving from one state (of being or mind) to something new: whether in the moment of arriving at Lyn’s House from elsewhere, or as a growing experience over time.
Communication and connectedness
Communication and connectedness conveys the many expressions in the research of ‘being together’ as something important in Lyn’s House. It also points to the variety of ways that communication happens: from chatting and catching up to a sense of mutual belonging, love and care.
Joy
Joy appeared more than once as a contribution from individuals in the research as an experience of fun and laughter, but ‘not just that: something deeper…’
Further research planned
Questions raised by the data and areas for further/deeper exploration
Interviews
Our final planned research activity is one-to-one interviews: a more traditional method of research involving people, adapted as necessary for each participant.
Interviews will offer an opportunity to:
• explore more deeply some of the data already gathered
• ask about any challenging or difficult experiences of Lyn’s House in a potentially safer way
• explore the place and importance of Christian faith and belonging, particularly for members of the community with learning disabilities who may not express and practice faith in conventional ways
• hear from the families of community members with learning disabilities, many of whom are regular visitors at Lyn’s House gatherings
• listen to former members of Lyn’s House
What underlies people’s experience of Lyn’s House?
In the one-to-one interviews, we will also invite participants to consider which aspects of Lyn’s House might underlie their experience of belonging to the community: which practices, habits, behaviours – and which elements of its ethos, expressed or tacit – they regard as key, core, or indispensable.
Gaining a clearer understanding of which elements of its practice and ethos seem to be ‘core’ will offer a firm foundation for the application of our research.
We want to use the research, findings and feedback from dissemination to design flexible resources for other communities based on the Lyn’s House model which can be adapted to differing circumstances and settings.
Please use the links below to support the work of the project, to contact us, and to register interest in the planned resources
Additional information
This section contains more detail on the background to the project, our overall approach to the research, and some information about how we have gone about it.
Please contact us using the link above if you’d like to know more.
The research question: ‘What characterises Lyn’s House?’
This is the central question for the project. It arose from observation of the meaning and impact Lyn’s House seems to have for people, but their difficulties in saying why.
The research and reflection elements of the project are seeking a richer account of people’s experience of Lyn’s House and what they feel is most important. The hope is that this will also help understand what it is about the community’s life, ethos, practice which underlies this experience.
What we find and learn will benefit us in Lyn’s House, both in terms of a potentially deeper understanding and clearer articulation of who we fundamentally are and seek to be, and in possibly bringing to light areas of difficulty or dissonance in some people’s experience.
The project outputs
We also want to share what we learn, including the potential for the Lyn’s House ‘model’ to be replicated and to enrich existing communities such as churches and the key ‘characteristics’ of this model of community.
This will be in two phases.
We will disseminate our findings via reports, articles, seminars, presentations – in traditional and more accessible formats), which will also give opportunity for constructive, critical feedback from other perspectives and constituencies.
We will then use what we learn from the research, dissemination and feedback to design resources for those wishing to found new communities, and to offer to existing organisations and churches. This will allow the Lyn’s House model to be use and improvised on in a variety of settings and to meet different needs.
Methodology: theological action research
This is the overall approach we have used for our project, as the most appropriate for a community based on mutuality, welcome and openness to the gifts as well as struggles of each person. In this approach, the community being researched is involved in the design and conduct of the research, and in reflection on data and dissemination of findings. In the case of Lyn’s House, this has meant that people with a wide range of abilities have helped design and conduct the research and been part of reflecting on the data. It has also meant that we have needed to go at a pace which works for everyone, and take our time, so that as far as possible participation is genuine rather than tokenistic.
Members of the community have been involved in project design, in leading research activities, and in Reflector Groups looking at the data.
The research and reflection so far
The first two research activities have invited current members of Lyn’s House to express how they experience Lyn’s House , and what’s important to them about it. We have tried to work with familiarity as far as possible: using the kinds of gatherings and activities which are part of life in Lyn’s House already as the basis for research activities. These have included small groups of people, and larger gatherings, as settings for the research activity, and a mix of verbal and non-verbal ways of communicating.
The participants
People who regularly come to Lyn’s House gatherings have been invited to participate. Ages vary, with a large number of people of university and college age, a number of people in their thirties and forties, and a few over forty.
lynshouse.org 