Tea in the Pot BSA Presentation

a ‘Great Good Place’ in Govan?
Maria Feeney
Lecturer in Sociology
School of Social Sciences
University of the West of Scotland
maria.feeney@uws.ac.uk
Tea in the Pot:

Maria Feeney
Introduction
Tea in the Pot - What is it? Where is it? What does it do?
Third place – A place beyond home and work (Oldenburg, 1999)
Extending the concept of ‘third place’
Tea and the Pot as a third place

Maria Feeney
Tea in the Pot
• Tea in the Pot - founded 2004
• Meet twice weekly in Pearce Institute, Govan, Glasgow
• Act as a meeting place for women in an area of multiple deprivation
• Rent paid by Oxfam who also provide a worker to help with organisational issues
• Run by volunteers

Maria Feeney
Third Place (great good place)
The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons,
and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (Oldenburg 1999)
•‘Third place’ - place beyond the first & second places of home & work
•Places where people meet and interact, supporting social interaction
•Places that supports the community ‘social vitality’

Maria Feeney
Oldenburg’s eight characteristics of third place
1. neutral
2. non-hierarchical
3. interactive
4. accessible and accommodating
5. welcoming
6. ordinary
7. sociable
8. comfortable
(Oldenburg 1999)

Maria Feeney
Employing Oldenburg’s concept of third place
Commercial third places
– fast food restaurants and service places
– often places frequented by seniors (Cheang 2002; Meshram & Cass 2013; Rosenbaum 2009)
Non-commercial third places
– cancer support centres (Glover & Parry 2009; Rosebaum & Smallwood 2011)
– libraries (Harris 2003; Harris 2007; Johnson 2010; Lawson 2004; Montgomery & Miller 2011)
Virtual third places
– massively multi-player online games (Ducheneaut et al. 2007; Steinkuehler 2005)
– Social media (Farley 2013; Hamilton, et al. 2014)

Maria Feeney
Employing Oldenburg’s concept of third place
Third place in areas of deprivation
– focus on UK
– erosion of the infrastructure of deprived areas
– decline in various third of places
– negative impact on social interaction
Third places
– important social function
– important functional role
(Hickman 2010, 2013)

Maria Feeney
Recurrent themes in the literature
Third places
•encourage social interaction
•help counter feelings of loneliness and isolation
•help build confidence
•provide a home away from home

Maria Feeney
Tea in the Pot as a third place
Encourage social interaction
‘it’s a good atmosphere.
You’re always welcomed
and you meet different
people and get a good
laugh’‘we can debate (talk) about
anything. Independence, what’s
been on the news, what’s been on
the television, just anything’
‘Conversation is a lively and
is an important part of
what goes on at the group.’

Maria Feeney
‘…I suffer from panic and anxiety,
I’ve been battling them for years.
When we were talking in here the
other week…I just felt like, it was a
realisation that ‘my god, if I didn’t
come down here, I don’t think I
would go out of the house’
‘If it wasn’t for here (some
women) wouldn’t come out.
You know your comfortable,
you can talk about anything.
Really, aye,…it’s just a great
place to be…to feel relaxed’
Tea in the Pot as a third placeTea in the Pot as a third place
Countering feelings of loneliness and isolation
‘That is the same with me. You come
here and you leave here and you go
away. That’s you, you go home and
your door is shut and you don’t see
anybody else. So it’s important to
come here to talk to people’

Maria Feeney
‘ I’ve got a lot of confidence from
this place…I mean a lot of people
think I’m a very confident person
but, you know, to start off with,
I’m a very quiet person in
company…you know I’m easily
embarrassed…’
‘ I’ve got a lot of confidence from
this place…I mean a lot of people
think I’m a very confident person
but, you know, to start off with,
I’m a very quiet person in
company…you know I’m easily
embarrassed…’
Confidence building
‘I’ve got a lot of confidence from this
place, I didn’t always have that.
Before (coming to TITP) I would have
just sat back, just sat in the house and
not go out, I would not have had the
confidence to go there’ (meeting with
Poverty Alliance)

Maria Feeney
Home away from home atmosphere
‘I just feel that it’s like a big living
room I’m going in to’
‘It’s something you would like
to be your home when you
come in here. You know what I
mean. You feel comfortable in
here don’t you’
‘I think it’s the way the lassies
have set it up. Sometimes you
go in and they’ve got the soft
music on…oils burning and
soft lighting so it’s a very
calming atmosphere. Other
times the light are up…’
‘I think it’s like going to see
your mammie, it’s like going
to your mammie’s house’

Maria Feeney
Tea in the Pot as Third Place
• TITP exhibits most of characteristics of Oldenburg’s ideal type third place
• Key themes identified in literature evident in TITP
• Oldenburg’s exclusion of voluntary groups’ third place status
• Austerity and deprivation - voluntary groups are more important as third places
• TITP not issue based - ‘[it] is whatever comes through the door’
• TITP - a place for critical social and political refection

References
Cheang, M. (2002). "Older adults’ frequent visits to a fast-food restaurant: Nonobligatory social interaction and the significance of play in a ‘‘third place’’." Journal of Aging Studies 16: 303-321.
Ducheneaut, N., et al. "Virtual ‘‘Third Places’’: A Case Study of Sociability in Massively Multiplayer Games." Computer Supported Cooperative Work 16(1-2): 129-166.
Glover, D. T. and D. C. Parry (2009). "A third place in the everyday lives of people living with cancer: Functions of Gilda's Club of Greater Toronto." Health and Place 15: 97-106.
Hamilton, W., et al. (2014). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play within Live Mixed Media. ACM CHI 2014. Toronto. Available at:
http://ecologylab.net/research/publications/streamingOnTwitch.pdf [Accessed 14 Mar 2014].
Harris, C. (2007). "Libraries with Lattes: The New Third Place." Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 20(4).
Harris, K. (2003). "Your third place or mine? Public libraries and local communities." Public library journal 18(2): 26-29.
Hickman, P. (2010). Neighbourhood Infrastructure, ‘Third Places’ and Patterns of Social Interactionw. Sheffield, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research/Sheffield Hallam University.
Hickman, P. (2013). ""Third places" and social interaction in deprived neighbourhoods in Great Britain." Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 28(2): 221-236.
Johnson, C. (2010). "Do public libraries contribute to social capital? A preliminary investigation into the relationship." Library & Information Science Research 32: 147-155.
Lawson, K. (2004). "Libraries in the USA as traditional and virtual “third places”." New Library World 105(3/4): 125-130.
Meshram, K. and A. O'Cass (2013). "Empowering senior citizens via third places: research driven model development of seniors' empowerment and social engagement in social places." Journal of Services
Marketing 27(2): 141-154.
Montgomery, S. and J. Miller (2011). "The Third Place: the library as collaborative and community space in a time of fiscal restraint." Faculty Publications 32.
Rosenbaum, M. S. (2006). "Exploring the Social Supportive Role of Third Places in Consumers' Lives." Journal of Service Research 9(59): 59-72.
Rosenbaum, M. S. and J. A. Smallwood (2011). "Cancer resource centres: Transformational services and restorative servicescapes." Journal of Marketing Management 27(13-14): 1404-1425.
Rosenbaum, M. S., et al. (2009). "The Restorative Qualities of an Activity-Based, Third Place Café for Seniors: Restoration, Social Support, and Place Attachment at Mather’s—More Than a Café." Seniors
Housing & Care Journal 17(1): 39-54.
Steinkuehler, C. A. (2005). "The New Third Place: Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming in American Youth Culture.” Journal of Research in Teacher Education 3: 17-32.
Steinkuehler, C. A. and D. Williams (2006). "Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘‘Third Places"." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11: 885-909.
Turkle, S. (1996). "Virtuality and its Discontents." The American Prospect 7(24): 50-57.

Tea in the Pot BSA Presentation

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Tea in the Pot BSA Presentation