More Voices on MAPP...

We're really pleased that we'll have the contribution of other advisors on the MAPP programme this term and would like to introduce you to Hopal Romans, who'll be blogging, joining our monthly discussion groups and talking to some of you through one-to-one's for the rest of this term.

Check out Hopal's blog next week to get to know her a little...

http://hopalmapp.blogspot.co.uk/

Hopal has extensive experience as a dancer, performer, arts practitioner, teacher and advisor within and beyond formal educational and professional practice settings and has experienced and survived being a distance learner herself! It will be great to have her voice in the mix of our MAPP dialogues.

For those of you that I am the main advisor to, Hopal will be talking with you now, as I am undergoing hip replacement surgery this coming week and will need to take some time to recover. You can contact Hopal via email to arrange one-to-ones and to send your draft work to which is due in November.

email: <hopal.romans1@gmail.com>

Do keep your thoughts flowing through your own blogs too...

Share what you're thinking, observing, doing... I look forward to checking in with them as I heal!

All the best
Helen

Areas of Learning...

A note for module ones to really be thinking of and sending us their Area of Learning titles in the coming week now so that we can begin to look at what your Module One portfolio will look like - What are the Areas of Learning which speak to your professional practice? What are you claiming as prior experiential learning and how will you illustrate these claims? What prior certificated learning are you including in your portfolio? 

Start digging out of lofts, basements, files, storage any certificates, documentation, video, programmes, reviews...that may helpfully illustrate the claim you are making for prior learning in a particular area, so that this doesn't become a mad panic as you are nearing submission!

Share your thinking around your Areas of Learning through your blogs...

A note on blogs...

There is now an updated list of our blog addresses for the MAPP community available on UniHub on our MAPP DTP programme page in the Learning Community folder.

Please do connect with each other through the blogs, share something you've noticed, read, something you're questioning encouraging others to respond... the blog doesn't need to be a formal (correct) piece of writing, but you beginning to learn through airing and sharing your ideas, which are often questions as they form, and can only really formalise through interaction with others ideas, thoughts, experiences.

In module two as you're developing your literature reviews you are doing just that...having ideas which are grounded in, emerge from, your experiences and your are reviewing them, challenging them maybe through your engagement with what you read through the literature. What are other people saying on the same or similar area that you're interested in?  The beauty of the blogs is that you can actually engage in a conversation, offering and responding, with each other! 



A quote that really resonates for me from choreographer/scholar/dance artist, Emilyn Claid;

'We meet ourselves through our encounters with each other'

Liz Lerman at Middlesex University...

Artist, practitioner, choreographer Liz Lerman will be giving an open lecture at Middlesex University next week as part of the Dance Umbrella season in London.

Any MAPP students that are in London, able to come to campus are very welcome to attend this event. 

Please comment below if you are planning to attend, admission is FREE, but we need an idea of numbers to expect.


Details:

LIZ LERMAN GUEST LECTURE AT MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY 

TUES OCT 10th

6.00-7.15pm

GROVE DANCE THEATRE

HENDON CAMPUS

LONDON NW4

Impromptu Skype on Friday 6th...

Some of you missed the Skype Discussion Groups on Sunday... Adesola is offering a an additional Skype discussion on FRI 6th at 5.30pm (UK time)

Please do comment on her blog if you missed Sunday's discussions and would like to join this impromptu one!

http://adesolamapp.blogspot.co.uk


: )

Frameworks...

The key theme I felt from the second Discussion Group today was around the idea of 'Frameworks'.

Through discussions of research approaches the conversations moved between the need to 'prove' something through our research (positivist stance) and accepting the exploration, not in the search for truth but in the presence of the moment of inquiry (non-positivist). We talked about embodied knowledge and the often problematic nature of communicating this articulately in other (written / verbal) forms. We didn't reach any concrete answers (GREAT!!) and generally we all had more questions open up for us than we came to the discussion with (EVEN BETTER!!).

Adesola and I explained that this MA programme is coming from a non-positivist stance, which sees space for multiple realities, rather than seeking a singular response or proving of a hypothesis. This is a different approach to more traditional 'scientific' approaches to research which favour a right/wrong approach through the gathering of empirical data in order to prove something right or wrong.

In our individual and collective research, in our approaches to the world ,we lean on phenomenological-pragmatist philosophies as frameworks for structuring and shaping how we communicate and articulate our experiences. 

Below is an excerpt from an introductory paper I have written, positioning my research into improvised practice in dance. I'm sharing this with you not as a 'how to do it' 'this is what a framework is', but as an example of beginning to articulate a methodological stance to a research inquiry.

'I am interested in interrogating the practice of improvisation through the philosophies of Heidegger and Gendlin.  Both resonate for me with experiential knowing and offer progressive lenses through which to address embodiment as a process of 'being' (Gendlin, 1997, Heidegger 1953, 2010).  I see embodiment as an interweaving of physical experience, sensation and reflective thought, and aim to articulate the idea that knowledge is somatic—that is, gained through the body’s sensation or connection with the experiences of the world (Sullivan 2001). While I acknowledge that there may be times where emphasis will shift more to discussions of ‘this’ or ‘that’ ('practice' or 'performance') it is important to me not to separate things as singular happenings as if dislocated from each other but rather to view them through the embodied stance of ‘preseparated multiplicity’ (Gendlin, 1997, in Todres, 2007:21).  Locating myself through this web of practice I aim to open a pathway to discuss improvisation as a methodology for being-through-moving. I draw on my understanding and practice of the work of Irmgard Bartenieff (Bartenieff Fundamentals) as a framework for articulating this. Through movement, following Bartenieff’s belief in ‘efficient movement – efficient being’ (cited in Hackney 2002), I am situating my improvisational dance practice as a methodological practice-as-research; positioning the movement practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals as a rhizome of philosophical thought and experiential knowing which feeds and is fed through my improvisatory performance practice'.  

 (Kindred, H. 2016)

I'm interested in your thoughts on this and other frameworks...

What is 'holding' your space for learning?