professional development

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.

when i began this blog i spoke of two applications. i’ve made the first and i decided last week that i will not do the second. seeing what i did for the first told me that the second was nowhere as near worked on and thought through, hence very little real chance of being successful, unless i took a punt on an application, and frankly i was so tired from the gfa that i could barely do the mundance things like talk, walk and eat.

there’s some sort of phrase like not seeing the rabbits for the trees. i think sometimes i don’t realise i’m even in a wood.

today i woke feeling over whelmed, daunted by a daunting thing and rather feeble to do anything. once i had eated and attempted to talk about the daunting thing i realised the daunting thing was not something that needed to be got around. if i’m being very critical, i would say the daunting thing is myself.

interllectually i know that each day the sun rises, millions of people, including myself do things they’ve not done before. my problem is that emotionally i have memory of past days, that interfere with my intellectual karm of the day.

i know that the world in which i live is laiden with potential, tradition is only tradition because it was what we did yesterday, and sum would argue that tradition has to have had a lot longer being forgotten before it can be remembered.

in my practice i am going against the traditional subconscious placed within me by an upbringing of some years ago. it is not my intention to go against anything, far from it in fact. emotionally, as i push my practice into new professional days, months and years, i am going to have countless battles with myself as i strive to make new works, new interactions, boldly going into a new world that we all go into together.

it took me years to know that talking about one’s inner self is a way to make one’s inner self whole and at one.

traditionally we use words to communicate, to generate rhetoric and supposition, where there isn’t anything meaningful to catch up on.

i’m working on the research for my audio kinetic artwork. it troubles me about the content of the work, that i don’t know what it is. thing is this is the same for all of us. there will always be things we don’t know about, and making a beginning and keeping an eye on where we get to, helps to reassure the descisions we make.

i see the process i’m currently engaged in akin to a painter. i’m recording sounds. how does that be like a painter ? yesterday i set up things to record, i recorded, played, murmoured and got the recordings to a position where i could do no more that day. today, i went back to the recordings, worked on one in particular and worked on the detail, then stood back and listened to the overall work.

tomorrow…well, i haven’t planed that yet. i can do that over preparing tea, the washing up, after a shower.

if part of being a professional artist is about being transparent, i’m prepared for that. if what i am transparent about is not to the liking of the listener, i can not take responsibility for that. i would ask the listener to be bold and communicate back about not liking, for then both parties can be at balance.

as i near the completion of my second gfa application, i’ve begun to compare the process with that of a potential ma.

it’s my second gfa as the first was unsuccessful and looking back over it today i can really see why it was unsuccessful. the great thing was the feedback and the realisation of being able to fix what was wrong with the first attempt. i’m sitting with an application now that is way stronger.

on my lunchtime walk i considered the notion of ma verses gfa. i walked into a ma without very little bother, the interviewer didn’t even want to see the work i had taken to show him. i soon became aware of a kind of ultra right wing opinion of the staff that ran the institution and after a few weeks realised that attempting the ma part time was not going to work. i gracefully bowed out at the point that it all was not making sense for me.

and so to the gfa.

i began round one in October last year, heard about the outcome in January, started version two a week later and have worked near constantly on it since. i’ve failed once so the ogre of failure bears no relevance this time, i don’t fear it any longer.

and here’s the rub.

i think i’ve got more out of doing this gfa than i would have done by doing the ma. alright on the ma i would have had time to read and learn about what others have already done. i would have been imparted to by the academic right wingers, useful as that maybe, i doubt if i would have enjoyed it. the gf ahas been tough, however it’s all mine and it’s all in the real world, with real issues and real people threatened by real prospects of their world being different.

i would ague in favour of attempting a gfa application right now instead of doing an ma. the ma is fantastic and indulgent, however do we need fantastic indulgent creative people ? i see evidence to suggest that the role of the artist within publically funded domain is to be an instigator, a collaborator, someone to bring disparate worlds together and create something magical.

i will argue that attempting a gfa should be the first port of call for anyone aspiring to be an artist, before attempting any further higher study. there are fabulous opportunities to be had by those wishing to bring things together, to communicate, to be involved with worlds other than their own.

i’m days away from completing my second gfa, and i am not scared.

when playing rugby at senior school, i once attempted a quick lineout, by throwing it to myself. i was commended for my thought and inventiveness. however, in that moment of improvisation i forgot i key rule, the ball must travel 5 metres before being touched. the improvised lineout was ruled unlawful and my breakaway try was thawted.

i learnt a lesson i wouldn’t forget.

my sporting career never went beyond schoolboy rugby and football as my professional career at that early age took me into the theatre. reflecting about the theatrical process now, i see that the process nurtured a culture of success amongst the protagonists. no matter what the role, the success of the show was the goal of all working in the theatre.

i ran my culture of success theory past a friend who still works in professional theatre. he agreed. he also brought to the fore about expectations of colleagues. we discussed a monday load in of a tour. in his department he would be expected to do certain things and he expected certain things from his colleagues.

when a good team worked together, the load in would be easy and successful.

i left the theatre some years ago. an opportunity to learn a new process beckoned.

now i find myself in another phase of learning a new skill and a new working sphere.

using a recent you tube incident as a starting point, i expanded on my culture of success theory with my friend, as i am finding that there is also a culture of failure.

outside of the theatrical process, outside of a common goal, when attempting to do something, to achieve something, i am experiencing conditions that if not reversed will lead to failure of a venture. but how to reverse them ?

to explore the common goal.

my cpd is based on what do i need to do to succeed, what do i need to learn to succeed.

i’ve begun working with the full version of the interactive development tool. my interactive audio kinetic artwork’s interactive component has begun to be properly researched. i’m supported by a very positive online community, where it’s all about succeeding in one’s endeavour.