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

Thursday, 30 January 2020

Wednesday Feb 5th Discussion Group

Discussion group - (BAPP all Modules)
Wednesday 5th of February-
8:15am
 or 
9pm

Comment below to indicate which you will be joining. Let us know what you are interested in sharing during the discussion.


Monday, 27 January 2020

Beginning in the Middle!!

Starting/Starting back to BAPP.

I have posted before about how 'starting' or beginning comes in different forms. See this post

But at the moment I am thinking about getting to the middle!! rather than thinking about beginning and ending - which we tend to do and dismiss the middle. As if the middle was just the vehicle for getting somewhere else. But as you know from my work - the process is the 'thing' the process is it, the journey is the learning part. So rather than think about making your study a compartment that must begin somewhere and end somewhere try thinking about how you get to the middle of it. How do you get to the point where you are in a routine, where you are familiar with some thoughts and books and people and they are mulling over in your head (in the supermarket or on the bus)? How do you get to enjoying the feeling of explaining an idea or dancing or reflecting on it in your journal that already has a number of pages you have written on? How do you get to your blog being a familiar place that you write in and have comments on and use to connect and comment with a group of students on BAPP you are fond of?

How do you get to be in the middle of your life not on its edges? That is what I am asking myself at the moment.

Please comment below

Thursday, 23 January 2020

Welcome back Skype - make sure you have a contact.

We are looking forward to the Welcome Back Skypes on Friday and Saturday. If you have not Skyped with Adesola before you have to send a Skype contact request to Adesola. We can not find you, you have to send a message to us. If you are not in a Skype group titled for the date of the Welcome Skype you want it means Adesola does not have your Skype address/contact yet.

For those who are missing the welcome Skypes - all information is in the Handbooks (Skypes and campus sessions are not compulsory). But if you want to hear more about the sessions go to the blogs, read and comment there to continue the conversations in the Skypes etc...

Thursday, 9 January 2020

Welcome back Skypes - January 2020

We have Skypes to start the term off - these are induction/reminder Skypes. These are particularly important for those starting the course and a good reminder for those coming back to a new Module.

The Skype times are:
Friday January 24th - 6pm 
or
Saturday January 25th - 3pm 
(times in London)

Please indicate below in the comments which you would like to attend. Make sure it is clear in your comment who you are!! Make sure you have sent a Skype request to Adesola prior to the call date.

Wednesday, 8 January 2020

BAPP Module Three presentations

Some great presentations from Module Three across the last two days - well done everyone.
We kept forgetting to take pictures after the first group.
But here is Monday morning's lovely people...

Tuesday, 17 December 2019

What is continuing to inspire you?

It is the Winter break for students. We are busy marking and doing the administrative stuff of preparation for the new term. There will be less/no email contact but watch Helen and my blogs for posts for up-coming new term events (and check emails for welcome pack if you are new to the programme.)

Please check your University emails for anything the Uni might be in contact with you about!

Meanwhile lets keep inspired:-

Please put links to Ted talks or art work or other inspiring or art making/thought provoking things in the comments.

Friday, 13 December 2019

BAPP Module Three Presentations

Hand-in is today. We will then be on Winter break until the start of the new term in late January. But after the Winter holidays drop into Middlesex support Module Threes who will be doing their presentations on January 6th and 7th. It is also very useful see the final presentations as you will be doing them one day too!!

Monday Jan 6th2020
BAPP Oral Presentations/Viva (Grove Theatre)
Tuesday Jan 7th2020
BAPP Oral Presentations/Viva (Grove Theatre)

Indicate below if you can come top campus or if you want to Skype in to watch.

Monday, 2 December 2019

Skype with Module Three focus...

Great conversation with a Module 3 focus tonight. I am really looking forward to the final essays and artifacts people will be submitting. There are so many interesting experiences and ideas the inquiries have raised for peoples practices.

I felt our conversation about ways to communicate was summed up in:

...THINGS INFORM ONE ANOTHER...

Have a look at the posts and comments below from the people attending the discussion.

Thursday, 28 November 2019

The ways ideas can be communicated: Skype with Module Three focus

This Skype has a Module Three focus but any Module can attend. We will be thinking about
The ways ideas can be communicated

Monday December 2nd @ 6pm (time in London) 

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the Skype.

Wednesday, 27 November 2019

Nov 27th Skype with Module One focus am conversation

We talked about the importance of finding your authentic self in your writing and artefact making. What we mean by this was that you genuinely want to communicate an idea/story not just write to show you read something or can recite some information. The Reflective essays are about bring together significant points form the term and thinking about how they help you see your self differently or see more of yourself or a new perspective about your field. How you are 'widened'. Because of that they can't be about everything you did or learnt they must be crafted to tell a story that is significant to what you are being asked to engage with and address and to your practice. The essays are not just to prove you were there.


Online Session- Module 2 Focus (ACI 3622)
Seeing your Practice and self)
Monday the 2nd of Dec- 6pm (time in London)

Comment below to indicate if you are coming. Let us know what you are interested in sharing during the discussion.

Monday, 25 November 2019

Thinking about professional artefacts - emerging from your practice

Artifact - an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural (or historical) interest. In this case the 'cultural' is the culture of your professional practice. In our course therefore, a professional artifact is something of interest and familiar to people in the culture of your professional practice. This is then used to tell the story of/ the experience of the inquiry process. 

The Artifact needs to unfold from your knowledge of your practice and from what you want to say about your inquiry. NOT a solution to your inquiry but a way to talking about what happened to people you work with in your practice using the knowledge(s) of your practice. learning from what you do. Peggy Oki demonstrates how she understands the world through what she does. 


Friday, 22 November 2019

MOVED to DEC 6th Practicalities of doing practice-based research: Skype with Module Two focus - Friday 29th

This Skype has a Module Two focus but any Module can attend. We will be thinking about
Practicalities of doing practice-based research.


Friday December 6th  @ 6pm (time in London)

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the Skype.

Discussion Skype: Wednesday November 27th

Discussion Skypes are open for all, this is a time to share reflections, things you've looked at, thought about, discuss your study with other people who are doing the same thing - BAPP.

Start your day off Skype 8:15am (time in London)
or
End your day Skype 9pm (time in London) 


Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the discussion.

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Skype with Module Three focus

We thought about analysis and explaining the experience of your Module Three inquiry. By sharing what their inquiry has been like those in the conversation noticed:

The importance of themes as ways to organize as a result of analysis as opposed to just telling people everything that happened.

The importance of explaining the 'shifts' in the inquiry - which are often a result of a 'sub-concious' analysis of the inquiry that has moved you from thinking about approaching it one way to discovereing  a new way to engage or approach the topic.

The importance of understanding the point of the assessed work to be handing in - it is a bout an overview of the experience and what it has said to your practice - so you have to edit express this you can not explain every thing that happened. It took 12 weeks so it would take at leased 12 weeks to explain!!

At the same time not to cut corners on what you talking about - explain who you are, why the inquiry in terms of your practice, what you planned to do, what you did, what meaning you made of it and the analysis that emerged, themes and then some reflection on the whole experience (+ throughout reflection on ethical considerations and new questions that arise from the activity)

Please see comments below for people in conversations blog posts and to keep the conversation going...

Saturday, 16 November 2019

From Helen's Blog and other thoughts

A note for some further clarity around the role and purpose of Drafts of work.

Drafts are intended to initiate a feedback dialogue (in person, skype, via email) with your supervisor, they are not usefully used to ask if things are 'right' or sent with an expectation of receiving corrections, by way of a pre-marking opportunity.

Please do receive feedback as an extended discussion of your work

Often feedback contains prompts for further reading, suggested texts/practitioners to look at, comments regarding the level of critical thinking/analysis in your writing over overly descriptive personal narrative approaches etc.. Feedback comments are not telling you to 'correct' something and re-submit, but more trying to help you to move your thinking and writing on as we see the process of your work developmentally.

With this in mind, when you have received feedback on a draft of work, and please do consider that we are working our way through draft work from all students across the three MA programmes at this point in the termplease take time to read and consider comments made, come back to your supervisor asking to extend the conversation, arrange a skype is you have further thoughts and questions as a result of the feedback, but please try not to send a 2nd draft asking if the work is now correct, or continuous re-drafts up until the submission date.

Other thoughts 
Do I need to do a new literature review from Module Two to Module Three? 
No, you do not need to re-write the literature review it was there to help you in this next part of the course but it should be likely that doing the inquiry has shed like on different part of the topic which requires you to add to the literature you already have looked at. Or maybe a part of the literature review you did not look at much has now become more important. So use the older review as a starting point and add to it. In your final work you need to include those part of the review that help explain the pints you are making and give context to the scholars you are quoting or ideas you are discussing throughout …. 


Please use the Feedback exchange form. It is so we can start the conversation your draft opens.

Please do not send emails saying, ‘Did you get my email?’ Please just resend the email and contents. At busy times, it means the person being asked ‘Do you get my email’has to find the email they might not have had in the first place – when you could just start from the email you have sent that they now have safely and can reply to.

Thursday, 14 November 2019

The central place of analysis, synthesis of information through reflection: Skype with Module Three focus

This Skype has a Module Three focus but any Module can attend. We will be thinking about
The central place of analysis, synthesis of information through reflection

Tuesday November 19th @ 6pm (time in London) 

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the Skype.

Wednesday, 13 November 2019

Synthesis of information through reflection; Skype with Module One focus

This Skype has a Module One focus but any Module can attend. We will be thinking about
Synthesis of information through reflection

Monday November 18th @ 6pm (time in London) 

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the Skype.

Friday, 8 November 2019

What if you can’t interview anyone? the central place of analysis: Skype with Module Two focus -Friday 15th

This Skype has a Module Two focus but any Module can attend. We will be thinking about
What if you can’t interview anyone? the central place of analysis


Friday November 15th @ 6pm (time in London) 

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the Skype.

Monday, 4 November 2019

The making process

Looking at your practice whatever it identity it as 'making' is involved at some level. It is important to consider your approach to making (like your approach to learning - making understanding). Thinking about choreography or making and the different ways artists approach the making process. This is an interesting imagined  're-enactment' of the creative process of one maker (Diaghilev) by another maker (Alston).

Wednesday, 30 October 2019

Keynote presentation this Friday at Mdx live streamed...

We are so excited to have Dr. Thomas F. DeFrantz giving the Keynote at our symposium on Friday...

Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative 

Dr DeFrantz will be speaking from 1-2pm (UK time)

If you would like to hear him please comment below and we will make a Skype group to call you in as we live stream the presentation to you...

Monday, 28 October 2019

Different situations create the BAPP Learning Environment

In his book 'Knowing Knowledge' George Seimens talks about Learning Domains
In this course, we create the situation for all four of the domains he discusses in this course. But it is the combination of the four that is the Learning Environment of BAPP. The dance, the music, the play, the yoga class are made of a combination of elements and so is the learning environment of BAPP. 

Transmission Learning- The learner is brought into a system through lectures and exposed to ‘facts’.  The Unihub and Module Handbooks do this.

Emergence Learning– involves greater emphasis on the learner’s cognition and reflection. What you do with the UniHub and Handbooks and Blogs, and Skypes and conversations with your Supervisor.

Acquisition Domain– learning is exploratory and inquiry-based. This has to be self-directed (because it is your practice not anyone else’s) but self-directed does not mean alone you need to remain connected through sharing ideas (on blogs, in Skype discussions etc…). You explore this domain through looking at what you have done in the past (and writing past learning in Module One), looking at your current practice and how the course and ideas you encounter connect with it, through carrying out a project based inquiry. Sometimes you are considering all three at once (if you are in Module Three for instance).

Accretion Learning– is continuous, the learner forages for knowledge when and where it is needed – Real life and ongoing. This is shared through your blog – which is why your blog is so important to keep contributing to and why commenting on others people’s blogs is so helpful to them. 

Across all this ‘relevance’is crucial to look at critically.  This returns us to thinking about what truth, deception, distraction and fact mean to you/do to you. 

Lastly feedback (to each other on blogs and back and forth with your Supervisor) becomes a conversation - ongoing and not as set of instructions to get an 'A'. Go back to 'The Test'  in my blog on September 17th 2019 for John Green to explain that again...

Here is a video made about Connectivism which is the overarching idea for the network of learning domains. 

Please comment below....

Sunday, 27 October 2019

Campus Session (NOTE TIME CHANGE)

Wednesday Oct 30th
BAPP campus session
12:30-3pm

Room is in Vine Building (behind the library building) V101

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the session.

Discussion group: Wednesday October 16th

Discussion Skypes are open for all, this is a time to share reflections, things you've looked at, thought about, discuss your study with other people who are doing the same thing - BAPP.

Start your day off Skype  8:15am (time in London)
or
End your day Skype 9pm (time in London) 

Comment below to indicate which one you will attend. Please also give a sentence or two about what you have been thinking about/doing. This will help us plan the discussion.

Sunday, 20 October 2019

Saturday, 19 October 2019

Student Voice

Please consider being a student leader by being one of the Student Voice Leaders for BAPP. This means consulting with other people on the programme and feedback string points and things that have developed and things that still need development.

https://www.mdxsu.com/studentvoiceleaders

If you become a Student Voice Leader you get some leadership training from the Student Union and of course you can admit to your CV as a responsibility you took on.

Student Voice Meeting where you feedback to the University is the week of February17th 2020 (so if you are Module Three it might not be for you as you might have graduated by February)




Please comment below

Friday, 18 October 2019

Symposium - Queering the somatic Nov 1st & 2nd (London)

Try and attend there will workshops, papers and performances:
Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative Symposium 1st and 2ndNovember 2019

About the Symposium:
Dance can be seen as a critical way of being in the world. For us dance emphasises the felt over the ‘named’, dispelling binaries and challenging Western constructs of the passive body. Queer theory is a field of critical thinking emerging in the early 1990’s drawing on feminism and queer studies to challenge social constructs and identities. Moving beyond the social constructs of the body both dance and queer theory offer a fluidity for narrating the lived experience; narrations that interrupt dominant stories of identity and how we move through the world.

Queering the somatic offers opportunities to explore, challenge and celebrate the act of dispelling binaries: mind-body, male-female, subject-object. 

The symposium is looking for contributions that might re-imagine, re-educate, re-think, reveal and allow us to re-create a world without the limits of binaries that reflect the somatic experience of Being in the world. 

Queering the Somaticis the third somatic symposium curated by Dr Adesola Akinleye and Helen Kindred, following Wright-ing the Somatic(2016), 
and Narrating the Somatic(2018),

We hope; ‘Let’s imagine together we have all the money in the world and let’s let go of black and white, gay and straight, theory and practice and that all the gatekeepers have flung the doors open. Let’s focus on the arts, the practice and sharing. Understanding the world for a moment through someone else’s eyes’ (Akinleye, A. 2018)

Book a ticket using the MDX on-line store

Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Twilight discussions -

In the Twilight conversations we talked about a range of ideas. please see peoples blog post. One idea that was significant was the idea of the importance of having different perspectives. Not to 'agree' with them but to understand your own position better by understanding others positions. Here is a really interesting video about perspectives.

Monday, 7 October 2019

Collaboration ... learning

This blog post is about collaboration. Here is a video of an art work. As someone who makes community based site specific dance work I see this as art. It could also be an tourist marketing product!!

Have a look at this and then watch the video below that about collaboration. I am suggesting this because it is a way of revealing how the material (the professional artifact of the art work/first video) is another way of engaging with the theory (in the second video). Often the artistry we do is the embodiment of the theory talked about.




Letting go of dominating and welcoming making together...Learning to learning involves collaboration and interdependency. 



















The making of...

Sunday, 6 October 2019

Re:Generations - dance and the Digital Space - One Month away!!

Thursday 7thto Saturday 9th  at the Lowry Manchester, UK
Conference Re:Generations 
Workshops, discussion & performances.

Come along if you are in North of UK next month. BAPP and MAPP Alumni will be presenting work. Come along and support and exchange ideas. 
Hosted in partnership by One Dance UK, IRIE! dance theatre, Middlesex University, Dance Immersion, Canada and The Lowry, the theme for Re:generations 2019 is dance and the digital space. We will explore the ways digital technologies can be used for artistic innovation and creative practise, unite global communities through online platforms whilst increasing the visibility of diverse work to mainstream audiences.
Across the three days there will be panel discussions, lecture demonstrations, masterclasses, workshops, academic paper presentations, performances, networking events and more!
Get tickets here: 
https://www.onedanceuk.org/programme/dance-of-the-african-diaspora/building-global-networks/regenerations-international-conference/