Discipline- a branch
of academic study. My discipline is Musical theatre
Practice- I think
I define Practice as ‘The area of interest you are focusing on within your discipline
right now’. This means you practice could actually change from day to day or you
could have a different practice each week. For me right now my practice is focused
on having a creative outlet and storytelling through that outlet of creativity.
Whether it is Dance, Singing and acting, which is where my discipline lies, or
something external from my discipline such as art work or piano practice it is
all about doing something creative each day keeping connected to the arts.
The word 'Normal'
Why do we refer to jobs that are not within the arts sector ‘normal
jobs’? Just simply in the language that we use we are positioning the arts as a
career path that is irregular and abnormal. This is actually very ironic considering
that the arts its actually one of the most overpopulated industries. Who gets
to define what is normal?
When we reach that age at secondary school where we begin to
decide what path we are going to take, there
is still a huge stigma around choosing the performing arts root as though it is the 'wrong' choice. Many people,
including teachers, parents and friends argue, ‘It’s not a secure career’, ‘there’s
too much rejection’ ‘It’s not a real job’ etc, to the point that we are convinced
that choosing a career in the arts makes us crazy, so much so
that we have actually started referring to our own choice of career as ‘not
normal’.
Transferrable skills
The lenses have offered many ideas about transferrable skills. I
am not a different person when performing as I am when working in customer service;
I am the same person with the same skills that stretch across both careers. The discipline and resilience I have learnt from my practice is something I am using every single day at the minute, creating myself a daily routine and disciplining myself to get up and get moving, even during a lockdown.
Area of learning
The talk sparked an idea about an area of learning for me which is all about the most effective way of learning. It brought me to the realisation that too much criticism that is not constructive is counterproductive
to my practice. As a person I tend to be quite sensitive and in terms of my
ethic morals I am always careful about my choice of words and what I say as to
not offend people. If I am completely honest I believe this may be a reason that I don’t take criticism
well, I tend to take it far too personally whereas I think I work more effectively with a balance of praise and constructive criticism. A specific moment in my training that I relate
this to is in my first year of training I had a Jazz teacher who’s approach to
teaching revolved around criticism that was not necessarily
constructive. It got to the point where I actually dreaded going to class
because it was such a negative experience for me and I wasn't progressing. I began to think it was jazz
as a subject that hated and I put this genre of dance in a negative light in
my head. When I went to my next college I had a completely different experience
with my Jazz classes, which brought me to the realisation that it is not jazz as a subject that I hate, it was all about what method of teaching that I respond to. My next teacher used a mix of constructive criticism and praise in order to get the best out of
the students which I think was a really helpful way of learning for me.
“You can’t let praise or criticism gets to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one." ~John Wooden
This quote stood out to me because it made me recognise that
it can be just as detrimental to receive constant praise as it can to receive constant
criticism. With only praise it is very easy to get complacent and how can you
possibly improve if never know what you are doing wrong? These thoughts and my research on this topic is all very new so I'm excited to continue to look deeper into how I learn and hopefully I will connect this to some of the theories in the handbook about how we learn.
Kageyama, D., 2015. The Creativity Post | Praise vs. Criticism - Which Is More Effective?. [online] The Creativity Post. Available at: <https://www.creativitypost.com/article/praise_vs._criticism_which_is_more_effective> [Accessed 23 February 2021].
Hello, I really enjoyed reading this blog! I often refer to the job I'm doing now as my 'normal' job but now that you've mentioned it I realise how wrong I am and I of all people shouldn't be encouraging this language to be used. The amount of teachers and friends that told me I was making the wrong decision by going into dance is laughable as who are they to define what a 'successful' career is. It's really interesting what you've said about criticism which is linked to ethics greatly! I look forward to reading more of your blogs x
ReplyDeleteThis is so great to read and has triggered a lot of thoughts for me on why I left it so long to train. Certainly many people put me off pursuing acting when I was 17, and I listened to them unfortunately. The sense of it not being a 'proper job', being a difficult choice financially, and perhaps seen as self-indulgent all stacked against me. Lots to reflect on.
ReplyDeleteI loved your thoughts on teaching styles. Going into training I told myself not to be over sensitive to criticism - I was late to training and had only a year, so wanted to drive through it. I steeled myself, but in fact, by treating any comments in the way you've described Wooden's approach - as instructions or facts, I was able to accept them, digest them and improve. I ignored the way they were said and just tried to get to the main note. 'Suck it up' and 'be brave' were the phrases that echoed in my head. Don't know if that sounds daft, but it was a bit of a mantra that helped me. x
I'm glad that you decided to follow your heart and begin training, its very easy to let other peoples opinions influence what we decide to do, however we would never tell someone else not to chose their desired career. Treating feedback as more of a fact is definitely an approach that I am going to try and take on during my practice in order to not take them as criticism.
DeleteShauna x