Learning as a Circular, Reciprocal Force...

This week I have been really working on using my key texts to help me learn about Mental Health within the Arts. The book I am reading at the moment is called ‘The Authentic Performer: Wearing a Mask and the Effect on Health.’ It is mainly aimed at artists and discusses the life of performers, but the author very cleverly relates things back to everyday life, reminding the reader that often all of us feel like we are wearing a mask in some way, no matter what our profession or practice. 

In the introduction of the book the author talks about how by writing it, she hoped not to answer a specific question, but to provoke more questions to herself and her readers. I found this very interesting as that is exactly the aim of this course and our inquiries. She included a quote which I wanted to share…

‘as soon as man understands that, for him, the ladder of comprehension has no end, he can find comfort in the realisation that consequently there is no limit to his possible progress; no matter how advanced his wisdom, he remains capable of yet another step forward.’ Hans Selye P.320

I think at times we can become too goal-orientated, too fixed on the idea of a specific target or achievement. I do think that goals and targets are crucial to our development - they help to motivate us to reach a dream, kind of like a road map. They drive our effort and perseverance and encourage new ways to enhance our development. But if we get too fixed on one thing we risk loosing the circular, reciprocal forces of Art itself. We need to focus on what will happen after we reach our goal, where will this lead us next, how can we keep developing, questioning & growing. 

This quote really resonated with me and has helped me to understand the teaching & learning methods of the BAPP. And this is also very closely linked to my inquiry - as I learn about Mental Health with the Arts I am finding more and more questions that lead me to more and more answers…but then further questions. It’s a circular, reciprocal force that should never stop. 

It would be boring to live in a world where everything was already known, wondering about things and asking questions is a really great thing! Having a goal or target is a great way to add structure to that wonder but it should be open-ended to allow the learning, in this case, my inquiry, to take me in whichever direction it wants to!

An insight to my Inquiry

I wanted to share a little of what my inquiry is about.

My inquiry is based around Mental Health within the Arts...what support systems are available to us, how accessible they are and how many of us actually know they exist! 
I am looking into the psychological-emotional demands of being a professional dancer. I want to map the facilities that are available to performers - including mental health care and emotional support. I also want to look at the possibilities of making dancers more aware of the support that is available, as well as making the profession aware of the possible need to support dancers better in this way.

I am carrying out interviews with 5 professionals who are at different stages of their careers within the arts. I am hoping to learn from them, information about the facilities available, whether they have experienced them for themselves and how they heard about them. Do they refer their students or employees? Do they have to pay for these services?


I am also doing a lot of book and internet based research into these facilities to really learn what is out there. I am finding a lot of interesting things that I am excited to document and share!!

I feel as though my professional artifact is going to be a great way for me to share my findings and really spread the word to other performers about what is out there. I need it to be something that will really speak but I am struggling at this point to decide on what to do and how to best format it??

Due to my schedule out at sea, I am not often available to attend the Skype discussion. However I really want to get involved in the community and share information. I would love to hear about other peoples inquiries. I would also love to know if anyone has any information or experience about mental health within the arts...any useful websites, journals or blogs that may support my inquiry?

Thank you in advance :)

Discovering my practice and my preferred styles of reflection...

As a manager I feel as though I am always assessing others and reflecting on their professional performance, and I do not spend enough time focusing on myself or reflecting on my own professional practice. This module has been great in making me realize how beneficial reflection is and how taking a small amount of time each day to write a journal can make a huge difference in the development of myself in my practice, and consequently in my career. 

I have always thought that I was a dedicated person - very focused on my career and aiming for the top. I want to progress successfully and I thought that putting 100% effort into my practice each day would be the way to get me there. Always dancing full-out on stage, arriving early to ensure that I am fully warmed up and staying late to cool down and look after my body. But I have come to realize that this is not enough, because the physical side of dance is only one part of my practice. At first glance, my practice is mostly physical. Dancing is of course an active job and many wouldn’t think that dance has an academic side. But focusing on the written side of my practice, documenting experiences, challenges, ideas, is what will help me to develop and be a step above. I have been staying within the safe comfort zone and not pushing myself past this to explore what more I can do to be the professional that I want to be. What other parts of my profession can I explore and learn from? I think that generally I am aware of when I make a bad decision, when something goes wrong or when I have come across something that is new to me. But I have never thought to write down and document these things. It was something that I never knew could be so helpful in growing within my practice. I was narrow minded and didn’t see that my practice can be more than just dancing. I need to take time to realize when I have had an experience that is something that I can learn something from. I need to look back on how I have handled a situation and think about how I can do it better next time. Thinking about these things and having them written down to be able to look back on, compare and share is something that I am excited to get stuck into and something that I am sure I will see great results from.

I have been working professionally within my practice for the last 5 years. Just because I haven’t documented my progress does not mean that I am the same performer now that I was when I started. I haven’t stayed in once place, I have definitely grown and become a more experienced, knowledgeable professional. But I think that I could have grown a lot more if I had focused on reflecting. Seeing the things that I need to look into further and spend more time working on - being more aware of my strengths and my weaknesses so that I am working on relevant areas of my practice rather than focusing on my favorite aspects. Looking at what I need so that I can organize my growth and development in a beneficial and thought out way.

I think it is very important to explore learning and work on understanding myself as a professional and how I learn. If I know what I need from a learning opportunity, then I can put myself in ideal situations where I know I will get the most out of them. But if I don’t know this then I can spend too much time in situations that aren’t as useful to my learning style, or to my practice.

For example…I know that I prefer reflecting in-action. It is something that I do naturally, every day in my practice. As the company manager within my cast I cannot just focus on myself and my performance, I need to look at everyone else, the technical aspects of the show, the audience reaction. My brain is constantly processing multiple things at once and figuring out ways to improve things, help cast members should someone become injured, find a way around a technical-glitch that may affect the show. I simultaneously do this whilst performing myself and I feel as though my brain works best ‘online’. In other aspects of my practice when I need to work ‘offline’ - looking back at a video of the show, breaking down choreography for the cast to give them notes, spending time making a rehearsal schedule -  I have found that I tend to second guess myself, over think things and find problems where there really isn’t a problem at all. I have found that because working ‘offline’ doesn’t come so naturally to me I utilize the help of others around me by asking for their opinions and advice on certain situations. I think this shows that I do know my weaknesses and I always try to improve on them. My profession has definitely had a huge impact on the way I think and reflect and why I naturally prefer reflecting in-action. If my practice involved more down-time, working in an office for example, I would have more experience in reflecting on-action - taking time to analyze ideas and decisions. But due to the nature of my practice, reflecting in-action is definitely something that comes more natural. I plan to work on combining the two…reflecting in-action and then writing about this in my journal and looking deeper into it as I reflect on-action. I think that this will help me to develop different reflection skills and hopefully learn more from my experiences.

Before working through this module I knew that I made better decisions in the moment and that when I took the time to analyze and plan I really struggled. But I didn’t understand the difference between the two. I found Donald Schon’s idea of reflecting in-action vs. reflecting on-action helped me to distinguish between two different reflecting styles and therefore help me to understand why I find one style easier than the other. And Robert Kottcamp’s development of this by adding the idea of reflecting ‘online’ and ‘offline’ is a very visual description for me and something that I can easily picture and relate to.

As a professional I think that is very important to be versatile and have the ability to adapt to different situations. I think that within my practice this is something that makes me employable as a performer. Being open minded and able to work in many different atmospheres and situations is so important for me. It is good to know what I need to be able to perform at my best, however it is also good to be able to make the most of situations that may not be an ideal learning/work environment for me.

I am still exploring my practice; what it is, what this means for me, and how I can develop further. As I look deeper into reflection and start linking it to my own practice I am learning a lot about myself as a professional and how I can continue to grow.

How I learn and how this has changed...

I have been thinking a lot about how I learn. The way that I best take in new knowledge. Honestly, for me, I have learnt that it really depends on the task that I am doing at the time… 

When I was creating my blog it was something that I had never done before and really didn’t know anything about. I utilised the knowledge that I have about the Web and other Social Media sites such as Facebook to help get me started. Having experience using similar sites did help and I managed to navigate my way around ‘Blogger’ pretty quickly. Posting a blog was kind of like posting a status, and commenting on someone else’s blog is similar to commenting on a Faecbook photo or post. All of that felt very familiar and came almost naturally. However when actually creating my blog - personalizing it, figuring out how to change the display and order of things, well that took a little more time! On the Unihub there are videos showing us how to set up a blog and I know that if I had searched on google I would have found a step-by-step guide too. But if I’m being honest…I didn’t use these resources! I’m not quite sure why I chose not to…I definitely saw the video on the Unihub and was aware that if I watched it, creating my blog may have been a much simpler process. But instead I wanted to play around and figure things out for myself. Explore the different links on the site and see where each one took me and what I could achieve from that. Although confusing at first, I found this really helpful and it wasn’t long before I had pretty much figured out how to make my blog just as I wanted it. 

Looking back on this now, it really surprises me! I like to think of myself as a very organized person – someone who likes to feel prepared before going into a situation. I like to know that I have all of the tools and knowledge needed to be able to complete a task without struggle. And I even have a touch of OCD; everything has to be perfectly in order!! If you had asked me what my preferred learning style is when it comes to learning a new skill, I would have said ‘abstract conceptualisation' without a second thought! I need to work things out in my head and gather information before I complete a task. But I totally proved myself wrong with this one! It seems that I went for ‘active experimentation’. I just tried different ways and explored the ‘blogger’ site until I had figured out how to use it. 

Because I was so surprised by this, I stopped to ask myself why I had initially assumed that I would have taken the time to work things out before attempting to create my blog. And I realized that this dates back to when I was in high school. Completing my school work, preparing for exams and writing course work, I always took the time to prepare. I didn’t like to go in blind, I liked to work things out in my head first and feel ready. But high school was 7 years ago now! I have come a long way since then and grown not only as a person, but also as a professional. I think that my experience in working as a dancer has helped to mold the way in which I think and learn. As a dancer we have to think quickly and on our feet (literally)! If I am in the middle of a show and a dancer gets hurt, I need to figure out how to fill that spot so that it is not noticeable to the audience. There is not time to sit and prepare and think up the best possible solution. I have to make quick decisions, on the spot, and trust that it will work out. 

I didn’t make a choice to adjust my learning style – it developed itself as I gained more experience in my profession. Not only did I not realise that it was happening, but I was also unaware that it was affecting areas of my life unrelated to my practice too! For example; creating a blog. This isn’t a live performance like when I’m dancing on stage. I don’t need to think quickly and make decisions based on my experience. I have time to work things out and think things through and look at other people’s experiences. But because I was so used to just getting on with things and figuring it out as I go and as things happen, that is what I subconsciously decided to do when creating my blog!

I think that this shows that the type of profession that we come from, what we practice, has a huge impact on how we learn and more importantly how we reflect. If I had chosen a different career I may learn now in a very different way or reflect on myself very differently. 

I am now realising that if I had started to create a professional journal a long time ago I may have seen this progression happen and realised the exact experiences that caused this change which would have been very useful in learning about myself and my development. This realisation has inspired me to be even more committed to writing in my journal and recording my experiences – even the small ones that I don’t think are relevant at the time. Because when all of these experiences are combined it creates change and development and I am excited to have documentation of this. 

Has anyone else noticed a past change in their professional development that they didn’t know about?? 

I’m interested to hear your experiences and thoughts! 

Meg

Task 1a

So today I spent time looking at my professional CV as part of task 1a for this module. I realised that my CV is something that I haven’t put any time into for far too long, it hasn’t been update for a while and definitely needs a bit of TLC!

I have been working for the same company for a couple of years now and they have never asked for an updated version of my CV. Well why would they I guess?

This has made me realise that I should never get comfortable. I should continue to stay on top of my own development and my own profession, pushing myself because I want to, not because someone is telling me to. Striving to improve to ensure that I am always employable within my profession.

After evaluating my CV I realised that it is very basic with very few words. I have talked about my education & my work history in a brief factual way. There is nothing where I talk about myself as a person, my attributes and what I would bring to a job.  I think I definitely need to add a bit of personality to it so that it is more relatable and stands out.

Looking back on my CV I can see how I have grown over the years. I think I avoided going into personal details because I wasn’t sure of who I was and what I could even bring to my  profession. I am grateful of my education and my training as it has helped me to become the employable dancer that I believe I am today. But there are some things that school can’t teach us… we need to learn and figure things out for ourselves over time as we develop and gain real experience. 

I feel that I now know more about my profession and what it involves so I can get a better idea of what I can bring to my profession in order to be successful.

I also decided that setting up a LinkedIn account would be a great idea. It is something that I have never thought of doing, for the same reason that I haven’t updated my CV for a while. But I realise now the importance of networking and how having a professional social media profile could really help me in connecting with potential employers or other professionals. I plan to have this set up by the end of the week.

I have thought about my CV and written an about me section for my blogger account profile. Feel free to check it out!

Meg