Methodology

PARTICIPATORY APPPROACH

Qualitative approach

In-depth interviews with 10 Buskers (8 Male & 2 Female)

Snowball & purposive sampling: Facebook as a starting point, with subsequent referrals from fellow buskers and friends

Criteria: Able-bodied, young buskers

Interviewed buskers who busk at a wide range of locations, ranging from town areas (e.g. Orchard, Somerset 313, Clarke Quay) and heartland malls (e.g. Tampines, Serangoon, Yew Tee)

Interview with our first busker Jarvis

interview process

What we hoped to find out from our busker interviewees:

1) Background information - why and how they started busking, what kept them going
2) Audition & licensing process with NAC
3) Perceptions of busking from their family, friends and Singaporeans in general
4) Personal experiences while busking

Challenges faced
Future hopes and aspirations

5) Brainstorming of solutions together with them

6) Sharing of solutions amongst our interviewees and gathering feedback

coding process

Firstly, we transcribed the audio recordings of interviews (permission to record the interviews was granted by the interviewees).

Open coding was then conducted by identifying quotes that fit into specific themes, such as "disruption of personal space" and "lack of communication with NAC". From these themes, we identifed the main key issues from our interviewees, and also compared them with issues brought up in our literature review.

Besides coding for the issues, open coding was also done to identify themes among the solutions presented by the buskers themselves to solve the issues they have identified. These solutions were then shared with other fellow busker interviewees, and feedback was given so as to reach a consensus on the solutions with respect to the various issues faced.

It should be noted that certain issues were shared by all, while some issues were specific to certain groups of buskers. Do refer to the "Issues" and "Solutions" tabs for the full breakdown of our findings. After doing up the individual busker feature posts and coming up with the issues and solutions, we conducted member checks by showing the buskers our posts and ensuring that they were accurately represented.

it was participatory because

Through our interviews with the buskers, rapport and friendship was built as we came to know about their personal stories and the buskers were given the freedom to share uninhibitedly about the issues that they faced. The brainstorming of solutions were also done by the buskers themselves. This was important as the buskers understood best the issues that they faced, and also felt empowered and inspired in coming up with the solutions. The idea of coming up with their own solutions had not previously crossed the minds of some of the buskers, and this led to a sparked conversation about busking in Singapore among fellow buskers.

To immerse ourselves into their world of busking, we also went down to their busking sites to catch them "live" - from their setting up of their equipment, to thoroughly enjoying their performances and watching how the buskers and audiences interact with one another. One of our group members even had her turn at singing as a busker through the microphone system which was both nerve-wrecking but a whole lot fun! We had also produced videos of the buskers in action and our interview snippets with them on their respective profile pages.

By performing self-reflexivity in our research, we were able to interpret and make meanings of our findings without enforcing our preconceived ideas about busking, and were thus better able to accurately represent the buskers and their stories.