A summery of campus Session 8th Feb 2011

Campus Session 8th Feb

Todays campus session was my 1st (oops) and even though I competed module 1 without any previous attendance to campus, I was sure that I would certainly benefit from these one off sessions. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and all of the new and interesting people I met.  It was great to meet students who’s blogs I had become familiar with and most of all I now feel officially part of a new family all on the same path.   I feel this can only help towards my development on the course both in achievement and personal gain.

I quickly want to summaries today’s session for my own clarification and also to inform those of you who were unable to attend.

Task 1

We 1st discussed mapping our knowledge of professional practice. The following 2 questions were asked

*What do I need to know to be a professional practitioner?

*What else do I need to know to be successful?

Using these questions as a starting point we were then asked to think within our whole profession and represent our thoughts and findings graphically.

Here is my groups (Nicholas, Mark, Jo and myself) interpretation 

BUILDING BLOCKS FOR OUR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AS ARTS MANAGER

                                 B3 SPECIALIZED 

            B2  ADAPTABLE

B1GENERIC

B1 - We felt this to be the foundation for any professional practitioner and we named it “Generic”.  Within this block we included skills and knowledge that are required what ever practice you pursue.

B2 - This block was called “Adaptable”.  We felt that again many different practitioners would relate to having these skills and knowledge but depending on each individuals professional practice these sub headings would be developed and used differently. I.E. Marketing Strategies, I as an Arts Manager would market my business as a whole and also have to market internal aspects of the business as and when required.  I would possibly organize Events, Media Publicity, Publicity stunts and Promotional Material.  Where as a performers marketing strategy would be implemented differently and maybe include, finding an agent, producing a Z-Card, constructing a C.V.

B3 - This is our top block and is the block that helps define our professional practice as an Arts Manager.  It is called “Specialized” as it includes very specific skills and knowledge associated and needed to succeed in our chosen field.

By developing this block design we could now easily distinguish the skills and knowledge we required to be successful.  We could use it as a tool to individually start to recognize the  things we were capable of and competent at and the things we needed to acquire or refine.  In turn we were enlightened to the gaps between capability and competency.

Most groups focused on skills but it is equally important to gain knowledge throughout your professional practice.  A skill is something you acquire and become competent at, but knowledge is never ending.  There is always more unknown than can ever be known.

This lead nicely on to more stimulating questions.

*What do you know?

*What do you yet know?

*What do you want to know?

*What are your big professional questions? (Starting to produce thoughts for inquiry)

As a group we proposed and discussed “Big questions” trying to stimulate ideas for our individual lines of inquiry.  Unfortunately I am yet to stumble upon anything that I may wish to inquire but I will use the above questions over the next few days to hopefully generate a clearer idea.

To once again disect our individual professional practice we were asked

*Within your professional practice what are your personal advantages and what are your challenges?

Here are my thoughts

CHALLENGES	ADVANTAGES
Not becoming stereotyped	My developing knowledge
Establishing new contacts & clients	My age and experience
Maintaining status	My previous career as a performer
Staying current	Business has been established for 5yrs
Finding suitable committed employees	Recommendations
Networking	Being in a partnership
Funding

Within our group which consisted of myself - Arts Manager, Ellenor - Performer, Lisa - Performer, Nicholas - Arts Manger and Mustafa - Graphic Designer we were very interested to discover that what was an advantage to one profession actually challenged another.

I.E The older I have become whilst running my company Manic Stage Productions the more respect I seem to gain from my piers and clients as they seem to associate age with knowledge and success.  Where as a performer felt challenged by age as although more experienced sometimes they are deemed not as employable as a young fresh graduate.

The final part of the day focused on Special Interest Groups (SIG) we worked as a group to develop a strategy that worked best for all participants of BAPP Module 3835

Here is a brief outline of what was proposed

• A closed BAPP Module 3835 group would be created by Paula Nottingham on Facebook
• Everybody on this module would be invited to join
• Threads would be started by individuals wishing to discuss aspects / questions relevant to their professional practice
• Others would comment and reply to threads they were interested / knowledgeable in
• There would be no limit to the amount of threads you can involve yourself in
• If a thread was particularly interesting to you, you are encouraged to blog about your thoughts
• The person who started the thread should evaluate it on their blog and post this to the group
• At some point (Time frame to be discussed on a separate thread) more specific groups would be created to go further and deeper into discussions thus creating a more concentrated membership
• You would not be limited to the number of core groups you join
• These new core groups would also be closed and include students on the module but also invited industry professional relevant to the groups topics.
• These professionals would hopefully inject useful questions, knowledge, proposals etc to help us progress with our own development in our chosen professional practice.

All in all the session was a great inspiration to me and has defiantly given me the enthusiasm to get cracking with this modules tasks. I hope my summary has helped anyone that was unable to attend and feel free to ask any questions if you are unsure.