We’ve suspended filming for One Last Spin for now. This is in common with most but essential working as Coronavirus continues. Planned interviews with people in different parts of the UK will be rearranged.
The time won’t be wasted as it will afford us an ongoing opportunity to research subject matter. We’ve taken note of an increased emphasis by campaigners and academics upon the supply side of gambling, including product design. This has been a focus of research for some experts for many years, and something that often lone voices of ‘ordinary’ people have been expressing for a very long time. There are now organisations such as Gamvisory, a user-level group which seeks to involve ‘experts by experience’ in representing a vitally important but to date virtually absent role in influencing gambling policy.
Similarly, the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland are taking the lead in the three years National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms which will take a public health and population approach which ‘will put the voice of lived experience at the heart of the process.’ In fact, today an event to discuss ways forward of such involvement had to be postponed (and some of our potential interviewees were thereby unavailable).
One Last Spin will add to the growing media of ‘experts by experience’. For instance, check out the videos at Gambling with Lives, a wonderful yet tragically based user-led organisation discussing bereavement of those who have lost loved ones through gambling suicide.
It’s encouraging too to see the interaction going on between academics and the people whose voices matter so much and have been often unheard. As in all generalisations this hides the truth that many UK politicians and academics have long met with individuals badly hurt, sometimes ruined, by contemporary gambling.
One such researcher is Professor Rebecca Cassidy, whose fieldwork included working in a bookies as a cashier. Her recent book, Vicious Games: Capitalism and Gambling is a gem. We have written a short review of it here. It covers many areas of gambling but one thing that stands out for us is her attention to the paucity of much gambling research and the need to move towards qualitative research involving the neglected voices at the heart of the matter.
It’s in this sort of spirit that One Last Spin is being made.
The Machine Zone 