Fun in the Summer

Just a note / dates for your diary - We're holding our a Summer Intensive this August!  Some info for now, with more to follow;

The Dance and Writing Professional Practice Summer Intensive will take place August 17th-21st 2015 and will be held at Middlesex University's Hendon Campus, London.

The programme has been designed in response to feedback from students on both the MAPP DTP and the BA Professional Practice (arts) programmes concerning the transition from vocational training, performance work, independent practice, studio teaching into studying within a university environment and being able to confidently share rich bodies of experiential knowledge through academic writing.

The programme intends to address these transitions through a mix of studio (practical) dance classes and classroom sessions;  accessing and developing literature reviews, citation methods, academic writing structures and written expression of physical experiences, engaging with social media and web 2.0 online developing confidence in online learning and sharing.

Each day will begin with a movement class followed by sessions looking at text, research skills and writing to help students develop confidence in what they have to offer as academic students and to encourage students to draw on their somatic knowing of movement to inform their ideas and writing.

The Summer Intensive will be open for booking and a full programme available through the MDX online store by the end of the month, we just wanted to flag up the dates to you now appreciating that you're probably in the process of planning your summers!


Provisional Details:
Dates: August 17-21, 2015
Costs: £350 (Full) £250 (concessions/unwaged)
Venue: Middlesex University London NW4 4BT
Facilitators: Adesola Akinleye and Helen Kindred
Bookings and Payment online: www.mdx.ac.uk/onlinestore

The programme is open to all current MAPP DTP students, alumni and enrolling students for the coming academic year, and would be a great opportunity to come together and learn more whatever stage you're at.  We look forward to seeing some of you there!

Something I wrote for BAPP but thought might be useful to read here to…

Thinking about feedback….

I am getting lots of drafts and so busy working my way through things. I don’t read fast so it takes time because I don’t skim read; I need to read each word in order to really understand and analyze what is being said, because I want my comments to be meaningful and helpful.

But feedback is not sending a draft for my approval. The approval has to come from you – you making something (writing something) you feel ‘proud’ of or at lease feel you’ve tried your best at. Its about being honest with yourself on one hand and not leaving bits untouched because you don’t want to shake your own story by fixing them at this point. It is also about being diligent finding out the procedure for writing in this way, noticing the books you have read how things lay out and how they are presenting such as how people have used citations and then thinking about why it is done in that way and what it says about what you are trying to make.

Feedback you ask for from me is to get another eye looking at the work you are doing. If you send something and feel you cannot move forward before I get back to you

1)   Then feedback in that form does not seem the best form for the purpose you have. I would say you need to book a quick Skype call in order to discuss the specific points you feel you need input into before you can go on.

2)   Or your use of my feedback is not really ‘feedback’ it is ‘passing the buck’ asking me to edit your work for you!!! So you can use me to decide what should be in or out of your final piece _ I can’t do this for you!! You know what you want to create.

So please feel free to contact me in different forms according to what you need from your feedback. If it’s a quick block you need to talk out – email or skype (set up a time via email or call if you see me on-line). Then also have specific questions – ask what you want to know. Be direct about what you want me to look at that is because I am another eye so you can direct where I look.

I think it is really important in the performing arts to be clear and to have thought about the role of feedback. A few years ago I realised that when I choreographed something I would ask for feedback from a dance agency for instance. Then I realised I would get quite down when it wasn’t ‘can we book this piece’!!! what they would say was things to ‘improve’ the choreography or general comments. But that response is not feedback. I realised what I wanted was to bring my work to their attention NOT feedback and that by asking fro feedback I was putting my work in the light of something that was unfinished or something I was unsure about. That made me think that you have to  be really careful, direct and really want to hear the response when engaging with feedback. It is not there to reassure you, you are o.k.!!

What do you think?

Adesola

On writing and other forms of communication

Thinking about writing styles: I sometimes read a book and love the way the writer has what seems like a command of the words and language. I read a sentence and almost like a wonderful mouthful of food find there is a digestive experience where the sentence hits me with a deeper meaning after I have read it. As if it carried me through with meaning helping me follow the idea and then hit me with a reverberation (aftertaste) of deeper meaning as the idea settles into the paragraph. But it is not their turn of phrase that is doing this, it is how they are using the words like surgical tools to focus, hone in on an idea and how they have stripped away all unnecessary diversions so that they send me straight to the point they are making with that sentence. As if they had used the words to penetrate straight in to my mind and laid an idea there in the uncommunicable realm of my own ideas. This is why I am convinced words are of no use unless they describe something already existing – an idea. I have called this a 3D idea because it can be described from different angles by different forms of communication. (Akinleye 2012). I feel words are NOT ideas. They are part of the tools of cooperation that is communication.

Dewey says:

“The heart of language is not expression of something antecedent, much less expression of antecedent thought. It is communication ; the establishment of cooperation in an activity in which there are partners.”  Experience & Nature (1958 ) pg 179

So there is the idea, and the want to share it that is communication, the partnership that is communicating, and the tools  how we share it.

Next step: so not only should words be there for a working purpose to cooperate (not to augment or illustrate your thinking). In other words – words and thinking are not necessarily related. Words do not have to be the tools we use to communicate. In fact as dancers we know that in many instances a movement or sound expresses an idea much more understandably than words could ever. Mr Mitchel used to sing exercises to us and come up behind us and make what I could only call a ‘grunt’ but it explained the steps  feeling and direction of energy of the dance far more than words. And as we develop, as dancers we understand the steps, energy and direction are part of larger ideas about connection, balance rhythm ideas that are all learnt and expressed in the wordless realm of physical experience (of which my work is about suggesting that this is the realm of life). So if words are nothing but tools and they are not always useful tools then why should you be limited to them especially when you are talking about dance (often a wordless experience). Well you need to use words because that is what universities use and you need to communicate in the language of the University to talk to it.

BUT what about people at work, in the dance field – they are not a University? Yes, good point. What are they used ideas coming in the form of. How do you share in your profession?

So you will have two artefacts of the idea. (You have to have the ideas first in order to communicate them)

1)   the University artefact – words and paper (we know what this is because we work in a university so we can help by telling you)

2)   A professional artefact – this will be??? (We can’t tell you because we don’t work in your profession exactly, we are not there. You know best)

To be explicit (and this is the second time because I just wrote all this and lost it to my ailing computer!!!) this post is about words and communication. And has led to the advice that you write to explain, not write to sound like you know what you are talking about! (There is a difference). And then the post attempts to explain the Professional Artefact of Module Three.

[Point of interest. Image words not being things that represent anything to you, like I wrote

‘Getthy si heffney ard wenty bleu’.

It makes sense but not to you, so it has to mean something outside the words they are just to communicate an idea. But in case they don’t. that does not mean the idea does not exist it just means the form of communication is not working. You have to know what you want to communicate before you write. The idea is not in the words it is 3D and words are only one dimension. That is what it is like from my dyslexic prospective.]

What do you think?

Adesola

Akinleye, Adesola. (2012). Orientation for Communication: embodiment, and the language of dance. Empedocles: the European journal for the philosophy of communication, 4(2), pp.101-112.

Dewey, John. (1958). Experience and nature. New York,: Dover Publications.

Notes!!! On confidence and ownership.

Please do not send documents called 'Proposal' or 'AOLs' or 'Reflection' because everyone doing the same tasks. The title of the document is as much for the person receiving it as it is for you. If I get three documents called 'Proposal'. I then open them and hope that the persons name is clearly on the document!! But no!!! Often it is just the written work no page numbers or footer or header with the persons name and id number. I write this for both my BA and MA courses because they are both in professional practice and it is good practice to do the above in general. Send people things with your name on them!
Akinleye_blog post.doc
then when it is opened your name again and page numbers in case they need to print it out.

I think this is important because it means what you send is intended for the person reading it. This shows you have taken a moment to think about how the thing you are sending will be experienced by the reader and it means it does not look like you did something and sent it the first moment you thought you wanted reassurance it was ok.

Get what I mean? What do you think? Have you experienced the same thing? Do you suddenly realise you did this too!!!!!!
Adesola

Feedback

I wrote this for my BAPP blog. What do you think?

All most Christmas: I wanted to say a quick word about feedback. Remember the idea behind having an advisor and not a ‘puppet master’(!). Is that it is your work. You are not writing to please us. I understand that sometimes the University culture can seem quite foreign and you appear to be asked to do things for no particular reason other than to say you did it, but do not let this mean you start to feel you are just ticking the box of the whim of the ‘teacher’. We are helping with two things:

Firstly, the form you present your ideas in – that is they are your ideas but we are helping with the conventions of academia.

Secondly, we are helping with teasing out more ideas or helping you develop your ideas further. But they are your ideas.

So how does this reflect when you ask for feedback?

When you ask for feedback – explain what you want feedback on, what you want your advisor to look at. Just sending your essay again, again until the advisor says it is ‘right’ is not what this is about. You are in discussion with your advisor with your work write a note explaining what the draft is attempting to do or explaining changes you have made.

For example:

“Dear Adesola, I have changed the order I introduce the different elements of the research inquiry. Can you tell me if you think it is easier to follow in terms of understanding what I did to collect data? “

It is important you feel ownership of your work and you don’t feel you are having to stab in the dark at what someone else wants from you.

Happy Holidays!!

Adesola

Odds and ends from about citation

This week Mary G. asked me a couple of things about citation…Here are some thoughts. Let me know what you all think…

We use the Harvard system. The idea of a citation is that you are letting the Reader know where you got an idea or quote from. It is making sure you recognise the places things come from. It also allows the Reader to go and find out more about that idea or the rest of the quote because they know where it came from. This is how they know you write the name of the person who said it and the date of the publication they said it in just after you mention it (for example (Smith 2012)). If it is a quote you also write the page number (for example Smith, 2012 p.65). Now the Reader has what they need to be a detective.

First they go to the end of your writing to the bibliography. There you will have written the longer version. The name of the person is first (Smith) so they can find the name you had in the text and then they check the date (2012). Smith might have written a number of things that you have quoted at different times so there maybe a (Smith, 2007) as well. Then the rest of the long citation in the bibliography tells us the name of the book and who published. The whole point of all of this is that the Reader can go to the library and get the same book you were looking at. Then they can turn to the page (p.65) and read what you read that led you to write about the idea in your paper. It is all about giving the write information so we can have the same (reading) experience as you.

For example:

James Smith writes about cows in his book ‘I love milk’. Here he is point out that grass is really important.

‘It was green and beautiful and fed the cows very well’ (Smith, 2012 p.65)

More about citation

If you quote someone – even if you have just said something about that person you still have to use a citation at the end of the quote, anyway you need to put the page number as well.

A quote should be on a separate line, in italics and indented. The quote also needs a ‘lead in’ and ‘lead out’ in your text. You cannot just put it there to make a point by itself.

Example:

Dewey’s Pragmatist perspective further develops the research’s understanding of dance as language. Whereas above phenomenological hermeneutics implies dance could be thought of as dealing with the leftovers of verbal language Dewey reverses this idea:

‘language, signs and significance, come into existence not by intent and mind but by over-flow, by-product, in gestures and sounds. The story of language is the story of the use made of these occurrences; a use that is eventual as well as eventful.’  (Dewey 1958, p.175)

Dewey sees verbal language as an adornment to the act of communicating. He sees communication as the drive to share and collaborate meaning. Effort of doing this can lead to verbal language but communication is not brought into existence by verbal language and the effort of communication could just as well lead to a movement language .  – Akinleye, unpublished thesis

The citation (Dewey, 1958, p.175) is linked to the following in the bibliography, which should not be separate, but a part of the same document. That means that when you read the above quote you can turn to the back pages and see which book it is. The citation tells us this: to find the book you go to the bibliography and look for the name Dewey. I may have a number of books by Dewey I have quoted from so then you look for the one published in 1958. Now you can locate the full detail example below. 

If there were two books by Dewey published in 1958 in my bibliography then I would put

(Dewey, 1958a p.175). Then the bibliography I would put 1958a again so you know which one of the two books by him published in 1958 I was talking about. So the bibliography entry will look like this:

Dewey, J. (1958) Experience and nature, New York: Dover Publications.

This citation format is Harvard:

Surname, initcal of first name. (Year the book you are looking at was published), where it was published: who published it

Note the punctuation as well as the content of the text. Using this method means your work is in line with standard citation formats, which means that anyone who is used to doing research can read your work and find the very text you have copied the quote from. Every book published in UK is in the British Library. That means that someone can find the book you are talking about. That is what citation is for. It is not to prove you know the quote was in a book by X.

Also note that the date is the date of the book you are holding in your hand when you look at the quote. So for instance Dewey did not first publish‘Experience and Nature’ in 1958, but that is the date of the book I have, so when I put the page number (…, p.175) you can find the page with the quote on it. In a book published earlier or later the print size maybe different or the size of the book pages etc… this means that that quote is not on page 175 of those books. This is why it is important the date is of the publication you have looked at, otherwise the page number is meaningless.

Citation and quotes from research participants

The idea of a citation for a book etc... is so that when we read your work we can then go and find the book (journal etc...) you had in your hand that you cited from. But the interviews are data you collected and we cannot go and find them somewhere. You are using quotes form interviewees as examples of something you are writing about, so it is a bit different from a citation for book (etc...) which is pointing us towards further reading or bringing to mind a theorised idea by someone else. So assuming you have given an outline of what you research looked like. [ie you interviewed six professional dancers. Billy works in UK, Jamie in Mexico etc... and any other relevant information we need to know about them while respecting their anonymity.] Then when you write about something they said you can write

'it's a long way to go to go to an audition' - Billy

So now a notes about quoting people in terms of the above:

First: the decision to give them names – many people say participant (1) or participant B. This is ok but think about the topic of your research. If it about people's experiences or feelings etc… then it is ok to present them as real people. Not labelled like test-tubes. If it’s a test-tube based data collection process then naming them A, B or C makes more sense. If you use names think about the implication of gender and cultural background a name can give.

Second, as I mention above take a moment  in the overview of the research project in your account to let us know who and where and how you collected the data so we can see any comments in the context of the inquiry. For instance some of my interviewee might be college students and other professional dancers and other teachers.

Third,  DO NOT use the quote to make your point. Make the point and then use the quote to give an example of what you are talking about.

'Most dancers I spoke to talked about the importance of auditions in terms of keeping current with what was going on, but also pointed out that there needed to a balance between the keeping current and the expense of preparing and traveling to an audition. 

'I live in Gistone (small village in the North of England) and most auditions I am interested in are in the South. its a long way to go to travel to an audition.' Billy (professional dancer)

Billy's comment underlined Smiths (2009) theory that dancers in the outside of major cities are disadvantaged when it comes to audition experience. However, Sam the other professional dancer I interviewed from the North of England saw a trip down South for an audition as part of a larger goal. Sam used the time to also meet up with friends and visit museums.

'I try to make going to auditions only part of what i do in a day. That way I feel less pressure in the audition. Otherwise I'm like thinking if I don't get this I've wasted the fare down here and what-not.' - Sam (professional dancer). 

Smith (2009) has said that professional dancers start to see auditions as away of socialisation. It seemed that the professional dancers who lived outside of major cities..... 

Smith quote....'

The quotes from Participants should be indented but I can't see how to do that on the blog post page and my computer keeps crashing, so I'M trying to get this posted before it dies again - but enough of my problems!!!!

Back to the quotes-- as we read more and more quotes we also start to get a sense of the personalities of the participants - that is also why its nice to give them names; it is easier to remember who said what.

As you start to write what you are handing in for assessment in any of the modules start to let go of the drive to make a point (tell the truth) - and think of the actual document you are making as also a work of art. how you write, structure and form the essay is an art too. It is not just about what you are saying because how we understand what you are saying is more subtle then just the idea, it is how the words are put together. I am very aware of this as a dyslexic - and it often seems like a magic trick to even get words together in the first place but every now and then you might read something or see something and think that was really well done. Think about what you think is well written and why. Alan did a post about truth, that was interesting to read. I guess I am saying the same thing. Let's suppose there is more than one 'truth'. What you are thinking about when you write should not be presenting the 'truth' of what you found but capturing the nature of what you found or experienced.   

(Sensitivity to the whole process not just an account of past.)

Breathe and keep going with the stuff for submission

‘The heart of language is not “expression” of something antecedent, much less expression of antecedent thought. It is communication; the establishment of cooperation in an activity in which there are partners.’ (Dewey 1958 p.179)

I love this quote because it reminds me not to be frightened of the language of writing. The words I write are not a representation of how healthy my (antecedent: before expressed) thoughts are. The words are just tools for communication – a collaboration of understanding.

So do not write feeling you have to prove something, write to explain what you know.

Controversial maybe but it helps my dyslexic mind (or somatic inclinations) to allow myself not to feel I am fighting for validation of me, when I am fighting for words.

What do you think?

Adesola

Dewey, J. (1958) Experience and nature, New York,: Dover Publications.

Stepping back from your own writing...or not

A quick post because I know you are all busy writing your drafts. I was looking at a draft of an Area of Learning and giving feedback. I thought about one section of writing, “yes, you are explaining the emotional value of the learning too.” The words ‘emotional value’ reminded me of an evaluation sheet I use. It was developed at Creative Partnerships, London North, when I worked there we used it. I use it now for feedback on workshops I gave or whatever. I suddenly thought feedback sheets ask for an analysis of something. They are tools that can be used for analysis and in this they have something to offer the thinking process.

The sheet I use asks for comments on:

What you would like to keep or do again

What you would like to let go of / try to avoid

What you want to shout about / tell someone else about

What you need more time to mull over, or develop a strategy for

What actions or next steps you would take

What the emotional value of the situation was

No particular order to these but I think they are all useful to ask yourself when you are writing your Areas of Learning (Module One) or your project plan (Module Two).  Maybe you have a feedback process you use. Do you think it would be useful too?

I have been writing a paper and experiencing my ups and downs. I wanted to share something I wrote last year on a BAPP blog post about the ups and downs of writing and feedback in case it resonates with you!!

My own process for receiving feedback cycle!!

1) Oh, my Goodness that’s right its not quite what I want to say, the feedbacker underlines a much better way to do it than I did!

2) I can’t do it!! I can’t change it, maybe I just can’t achieve this!

3) Wait a minute maybe she (the feedbacker) doesn’t really know what she is talking about. I think my work is fine.

4) I feel really sick (or other cultural / social condition that means I should stay in bed, etc… or other excuses for feeling not up to things)

5) O.K. that’s better, I think I’ve really improved the work, I can see I need to develop X / that bit etc…

6) Oh my God, I’m brilliant; she (the feedbacker) is amazing to be able to have seen my amazing potential.

7) New feedback

1) Oh, my God that’s right it’s not quite what I want to say 

2) I can’t do it….

Etc…. repeat steps 1-7 again

In the end I think OK I’ve done the best I can with in reason and the parameters of getting the shopping, getting the washing done and not going crazy. I can defend what I have tried to do so I just have to let it free into the world and hope I spelt it all ok!!!

What do you think?

Adesola