Collaborative learning and development certainly reflects back to my own practice and experience. As a d/Deaf artist I’m usually excluded from networking and development opportunities – unless I expend considerable time and effort negotiating access (with no guarantee of success) for opportunities that many artists take for granted. One of the reasons I was so drawn to the Agency was my sister artists’ willingness to consider how to include me, and this in turn feeds my innate attraction to collaborative and community approaches. The sharing of experience and knowledge is also developing my understanding of intersectional issues; not only broadening my knowledge of issues that impact on other people, but also developing a deeper understanding of how I am personally impacted. I’ll add thoughts and examples of this through my blog posts.
The first example is related to blogging (and a partial explanation of why I have copious notes but am back-filling in terms of actual posts). At the start of the project I spent some time looking at the a-n blog structure, as well as my website provider’s blog mechanism, but neither really seemed to meet what I wanted in terms of reflecting the shared working process with Ruth. We set this aside for a while, and then began discussing virtual information sharing (with the intention that this would then feed into our individual blogs). I was keen for some kind of virtual noticeboard that would allow us to share information as and when we wanted to without the persistent pestering that email dialogues can become. Ruth’s discussions with another agency member threw up Miro, an online colloboration programme, that would allow us to do just that.
We both feel that using this noticeboard approach mitigates the fractured nature of our working/personal lives (would be nice to have focused time to…well, focus…but few people do). It’s certainly something I’ll keep working with after the project is completed.
