If life is what happens to our plans, then dance is what happens to our steps.
ideas sometimes when you wait they come to you.

Preparation for starting with BAPP

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Campus session reflections

Here are reflections from the campus session today:

In our on campus session today, I begun realizing that the main task for me personally is to find myself within my inquiry. Reflecting upon it, some of the questions I thought about raising seem rather generic; when Adesola asked me why I was raising them in the first place, it quickly became apparent that perhaps I had to dig a little deeper.
Why do I feel a certain way about the topics I raised? Most probably because they affect me personally.
Ultimately, I have to think less of projecting an idea ‘over there’ and more of how to look for something ‘right here’ within myself.

Being faced with the aspect of ethics at the moment, I want to think more about how I affect things and how I am affected by things; knowing that I can only assume how I am affecting others, really.
Though ethics are being seen as quite a black or white kind of thing, I agree with Adesola that perhaps they are more reflective and therefor also personal.

Adesola mentioned Tina from Module 3 who was in two minds about whether she wanted to write her inquiry from a personal perspective or follow a more ‘academic’ approach by not doing so.
But why is it that we automatically divide between the me and the academics? Aren’t we allowed to approach knowledge and see it through our own eyes?
Do we think our own opinion might not sound as valid as it would sound if we spoke about it in third person, like It didn’t really affect us?
But no matter how hard I try to be objective, isn’t whatever I write ultimately my own take?

I am now planning on writing my inquiry from my point of view, reflecting my personal perspective on my own experience.

At this stage of my learning, I want to narrow it down to my inquiry topic as soon as I can so that I can allow myself to go deeper within the actual process of posing a question, or as we looked at it today, finding out what I would like to explore more. 

Read more from Irini 

Today I had my first campus session, it was an incredibly nerve racking experience as I didn't know what to expect. We started by introducing ourselves, where we were in the course and raising any concerns that we had. I had a question about task 2D - inquiry, I wasn't sure which practice to write about, education or arts.

Adesola asked us to write a poem entitled yesterday, it could include pictures or doodles if necessary. Once we had finished, we passed it round the circle and had to pick out key points that might tell us something about the persons interests or personality. This task was incredibly useful for me as I find reflective practice difficult and really helped me to find connections and things I am passionate about. It also helped me to identify how certain things affect me and how we affect certain things for example, the weather can have an effect on my mood. 
Next, we looked at the inquiry in Module 2 and what sort of questions we should look at. This proved to be difficult as we always wanted to answer the question instead of thinking about how it directly affects us. I personally think the trap that I will fall into, will be picking a question that is too generic and general instead of picking one I wish to know more about. 
A question that was raised was, "How can the arts be taken more seriously as a profession?" This is a question I have certainly asked myself many times, however it is too vast and not personal enough. 
Adesola was asked a question by a module 3 student asking whether she should write her inquiry from a personal or "academic" point of view. We had a long discussion about this and explored pros and cons for both avenues. I feel that it should be written from a personal prospective as the course is about exploring you and your practice. Also, it is your opinion and by writing "academically" it may give the impression that everyone feels the same. 
We also talked about how using ‘I’ can be academic also.    
This session really helped me to understand myself and how much I use reflective practice in my everyday life. 


Read more from Zoe:


What do you feel, see, hear about this?
Please comment
Adesola








Tuesday 20 October 2015

Campus Session info...

Campus Session October 27th. The session starts at 9am to noon.…it’s in-person at the Middlesex University Campus, Hendon. This session will be a chance to discuss your module, the whole course as well as meet other BAPP students.  It will be held in Committee Room 2 in the Town Hall. If you are not sure where to go, go to the main Reception in College and they will direct you.

Please comment below to let me know if you are coming.
See you there…

Adesola

Wednesday 14 October 2015

November 7th in London





I am presenting work- Light Steps at Stratford Circus on November 7th, 11:30am & 3pm performances. Come along if are in London (!).
Please pass on information to people who you think might be interested.
Here is a link too: https://stratford-circus.com/event/light-steps/












On Tuesday we had a Module Two session

On Tuesday October 13, we had a Module Two session:

What are questions?
We talked about two kinds of questions – questions that imply or seem to need answers
Like: Why do performers work through injury?

This question implies that you would need to find out an answer. But how would you be able to really find this out. You would need to talk to thousands of people to really be able to have any kind of credible answer and then you’d need to talk to them a few times to be able to really understand their reasons.
This kind of question would obviously take more time than 12 weeks and more knowledge about the field because in order to understand the answers you got from the question you’d need to already know about the question. In other words questions that imply answers require you to know enough to recognize the answer.  This course is about giving yourself the time to find out more to explore the unknown.

Then there are questions that help you understand your question better – questions that help know more about the question itself.
Like: ‘What are some of the reasons that performers use for having to work through injury?’ (you could talk to five people and understand their stories).
Or
‘What experiences have people in my cast have with working through injury?’ (then maybe you’d find out more about what have happened to people who work in the same jobs as you).
This second kind of question can be more specific to your professional practice (which is what your BA is about – finding out that will help you in your career).

Assumptions:
Another way to look at questions is to look at what they assume.
Read this post:

You can see that the questions themselves start to ask you to look at them through ethical eyes and imply how you should find out more.
Ethics is about how you look at your question from the perspective of how the question and you finding out more about it will be experienced by others. How much of the inquiry is you proving you are right about something you feel and how much is about really finding out more – inquiring.

Your question also implies what tools should be used to inquire into it. For instance above the question about ‘what are some of the reasons performers use for having to work through injury’ clearly indicates interviews …

Lastly:
We talked about planning
Remember that you are planning an actual thing/activity. It has practical elements it needs to be done over 12 weeks, you need to know where you need to go to get more information and put this in the plan and if you can go there! What you need to read to find out more and why these books (This is Literature Review to help you know what other people already think. This helps prepare you for the activity you are planning).

People involved in the session are writing more about the conversation in posts on their blogs and in the comments below.

What do you think?



Adesola