professional development

next week is the beginning of my arts council funded project ‘the snee snaw’. for the duration of that project i will keep a blog to chat and reflect upon the journey of the project. it will be a record of my professional development for the next 10 weeks.

i’ve been in an elevated state of mind since saturday and in the last few hours feel like i’m levelling out again. all of this is a perfectly legal activity, on saturday i read that my grants for the arts application to stage the snee snaw this summer has been successful.

my hightened state has been helped along this week by several meetings in which options for after the snee snaw project were looked at. these are at an early stage of consideration, so will remain merely a mention at the moment.

getting back to the gfa news. i’ve been surprised at my reaction to the news and actually rather pleased with myself that i’ve been able to let the feeling sit and not be too phased by it. once i’ve accepted the offer, i will then need to re-acquaint myself with what it is i said i was going to do. i’m really excited at the prospect of getting involved with promoting the work as well as making it.

lately i’ve been wondering what professional development means, especially to me. development seems to be an advancement from a position hither to already at. professional seems to be a word associated to a person that does something for money and because of this has a certain level of competence.

however, what if what i want to do to be professional is not in concurrence with others who also have a view on what professional is. for example, i want to professionally stage the snee snaw. doing this will be a development for me and my practice and those experiencing the work. very soon i will learn if a funding body agrees with my idea of my professional development.

i’m also being told and enthused at that the concept of the snee snaw could very easily be applicable to an occupational therapy sphere. this is a new sphere to me and at this early stage the thought of doing something for money in a specialist sphere i know very little about sets up an incongruennce. however i would like to do something meaningful and receive professional reward as well as personal reward. to learn about he new sphere will take time again. i am working at being cool with a bit of a pattern on getting near to something and it evolving into something that manifests itself at some distance again. intellectually i can see this as a good development, despite being emotionally distressing as this feeling of striving for something that remains at a distance is comparatively new to me.

i was cheered up recently by finding a school report from the third year of senior school. my top three marks were maths, physics and art. interestingly, after the third year i made choices about what to study to o level. looking back on my report, i can’t work out why i didn’t do art at o level. i did of course go through school at a time where “getting a proper job” was the priority, well, for my family it was. i would like to think that that attitude has disappeared now, as there does appear to be many more opportunitities to do things for financial reward now.

my relationship with other professionals remains a priority.