Discussion group 17/02

Creativity and Data Sources. 

Tonight's zoom call was an interesting discussion to a view from all modules and everyone's inside thoughts of where they are up to with understanding their practice.

One of the first discussion points that came up was, areas of learning.

It was nice to think back and to see how far I have come throughout studying this course. 

When I first started this course I remember not understanding what my areas of learning was or how to even start unpicking them. 

The key way I did this was looking at my transferable skills and where I can take my creativity and performing arts skills into other areas of work, which could and would broaden my practice in the future.

Other comments that students made about this was, thinking about what your practice has taught you. Thinking of significant moments within your practice that has influenced you. This was an amazing one for me and I was even unaware of it happening. I possibly wouldn't of realised it either without the aid from this course. Mine included when I did a group of charity based workshops to teach dance to children and young adults with special and additional needs. This later routed me to go down the SEN teaching path which I have mentioned in prior blogs which allowed me to continue broadening my practice further. Finally, the experiences that your practice has allowed you to have. 

Leading on from this we started to discuss creativity. Creativity is something that we could of spend hours talking about from all different points of view. A part I was really interested in was the fact that everyone views creativity differently. To a writer they produce creativity from writing words, to a dancer we physically move and bring a story to life. A director or choreographer has to have that creativity to be able to imagine it before it is even a thing. An artist draws, paints and physically has something to show. On person might be creative but not think it because they view it as being something else.

Is this not a way to suggest that everyone has the potential to be creative? 

Does being creative mean we have to be vulnerable? Maybe show a side of ourselves that is maybe a side we don't want anyone to see? 

I feel as performers we show vulnerability every time we step on stage. We tap into something that not everyone can and discover parts of ourselves we didn't even know we had. This could be for other creatives too in different ways and maybe creativity is a process and not something you automatically have straight away. 

Our last topic of discussion we had during the call was around the area of data sources. This was something I was really interested in. I am up to the point that I am starting to organise my interviews. However, I am apprehensive about the interviews. I want to be able to have the questions open enough to have a relaxed discussion. However, I don't want to end up off topic and not getting the data from it. After talking to Helen and some other students it put me more at ease to actually book the interviews.  Helen said, if I am talking about my practice its not off topic as it could lead to anything. Another student said that, from her own experiences interviewing in the way of a relaxed discussion you will end up and answering questions that you had in mind or that of something similar. Finally having a common interest in the topic will make that environment and easy conversation. 

I feel like we only scratched the surface on these points we made during the discussion group. I would love to see other peoples points on what we talked about and see if you think the same of differently about it.