Tuning in: using photo-talk approaches to explore young people’s everyday relations with local beaches

Oct 28, 2026

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The article examines how young people form situated, embodied attunements with local beaches that border their neighbourhoods, linking these relations to wellbeing and sustainable human–environment reciprocity. It proposes participatory photo-talk methods as ways to sense and access attunement, while foregrounding participants’ views, including the prompt-driven momentum for exploring bodily feelings and experiences. It further considers how photo-talk enables shared inquiry into entangled human and more-than-human beach relations and supports place-specific understandings and beaching practices across sport, health, physical education, and leisure contexts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Photo-talk approaches and participants’ views

Photo-talk for exploring human and more-than-human relations

Implications for sport, health, physical education and leisure

Sport, Education and Society ISSN: 1357-3322 (Print) 1470-1243 (Online) Journal [homepage: ](homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cses20)[www.tandfonline.com/journals/cses20](homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cses20) Tuning in: using photo-talk approaches to explore young people’s everyday relations with local beaches Marg Cosgriﬀ To cite this article: Marg Cosgriﬀ (2023) Tuning in: using photo-talk approaches to explore young people’s everyday relations with local beaches, Sport, Education and Society, 28:6, 629-640, DOI: 10. 1080/13573322 .2023.2170345 To link to this article: [https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2023.2170345](https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2023.2170345) © 2023 The Author(s) . Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group | Published online: 31 Jan 2023. | | | --- | --- | | | Submit your article to this journal | | | Article views: 1279 | | | View related articles | | View Crossmark data | | | Citing articles: 7 View citing articles | | Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at [https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cses20](https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cses20) RESEARCH ARTICLE Tuning in: using photo-talk approaches to explore young people’s everyday relations with local beaches Marg Cosgriﬀa aTe Huataki Waiora School of Health, University of Waikato, Tauranga, New Zealand ABSTRACT Attunement, connectedness and an ‘in tune-ness’ with places have repeatedly been proposed to be central to sustainable, reciprocal human-environment relations and in turn, wellbeing. In this paper, I examine young people’s emplaced and embodied attunements with local beaches bordering the neighbourhoods in which they live. More speciﬁcally, the possibilities of participatory photo-talk approaches for sensing and accessing people’s attunements to beachplaces are proposed. Participants’ views on using photo-talk approaches are foregrounded, including the prompt and momentum given to exploring embodied feelings and experiences. The ways that photo-talk supported a shared exploration of the diverse relational entanglements of human and more-than-human beach entities are also considered. In turn, the value of such approaches for helping to ‘show’ and ‘feel’place-speciﬁc understandings and practices of beaching, including mutually constituted wellbeing a/eﬀects, is proposed. Following in the footprints of others, I suggest the methodological and pedagogical potential of photo-talk approaches to researchers and educators in sport, health, physical education and leisure settings when examining embodied and emplaced experiences of wellbeing. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 8 July 2022 Accepted 16 January 2023 KEYWORDS Environmental attunement; bluespaces; photo-talk; wellbeing; more-thanhuman; visual methods Introduction Beaches, coastlines and oceanic waters have long been recognised as signiﬁcant to human identity; livelihood; and physical, social, cultural and planetary wellbeing. Recent inter-and transdisciplinary‘bluespace’ research including that concerned with human-beach relations has heralded, amongst other things, an array of individual and community wellbeing eﬀects of human immersion in and around beach environs (e.g. Bell et al., 2015a; Foley et al., 2019; Foley & Kistemann, 2015; Wheaton et al., 2021) . Like all places, however, beaches are inevitably social, political and cultural sites that are understood and experienced diﬀerently by individuals and communities, including in respect to their wellbeing a/eﬀects and enhancements. In this paper, I consider young people’semplaced encounters with local beaches. I make a case for the potential of photo-talk approaches for helping to shed light on the complex, multifarious and always contingent nature of humanbeach relations and the inextricable ‘presence’ of the more-than-human in people’s beaching. My usage of the term ‘beachi

FAQs

What does the paper focus on regarding young people and beaches?

It focuses on young people’s emplaced and embodied attunements with local beaches bordering their neighbourhoods, and how these relate to wellbeing and human–environment reciprocity.

How are photo-talk approaches used in the study?

Photo-talk approaches are proposed as participatory visual methods to sense and access participants’ attunements, giving prompts and momentum to explore embodied feelings and experiences.

What value does the paper attribute to photo-talk for understanding beach relations?

Photo-talk helps ‘show’ and ‘feel’ place-specific understandings and practices of beaching by supporting shared exploration of diverse relational entanglements involving human and more-than-human beach entities.

Oct 28, 2026

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