Code of Ethics and Conduct

I have found an extremely helpful code of ethics and conduct on the British Psychological Society website. It outlines all the ethical considerations needed to be undertaken when performing research.

http://www.bps.org.uk/system/files/documents/code_of_ethics__conduct_0.pdf

One question that came up as I was reading through this was:

When submitting work at the end of the module should you include signed consent forms and/or transcripts of interview(s) or would this be considered ethical misconduct?

Literature Review

Dance Ground (2012) The Launch of the Female Choreographers Collective. Retrieved 13^th March 2013. From http://www.dance-ground.com/2012/09/the-launch-of-female-choreographers.html

When I was trying to think of a high profile female British choreographers to research for my inquiry I was stumped. I could reel off so many male choreographers but when I was trying to think of female choreographers I could name a few European and American choreographers but only 1 or 2 British ones. This is when I came across The Female Choreographers Collective who are looking in to why there are so few high profile female choreographers. Although this isn’t directly liked to my inquiry I thought it was a good point to bring up and feel I could include the Female Choreographers Collective in my artefact as somewhere for choreographers to show their work. This would also give male choreographers an opportunity to show their work as FCC hold events and platforms such as ‘The Experiment’ where both male and female choreographers are involved.

The article: Dance Ground (2012) The Launch of the Female Choreographers Collective. Retrieved 13^th March 2013. From http://www.dance-ground.com/2012/09/the-launch-of-female-choreographers.html brought up some interesting questions for me. It raised the topic that I had already been querying ‘In an industry that is predominately female and in an art form pioneered by women ...Where are all the female choreographers?’ This led me to ask why? Although the article doesn’t answer the question it does open up the opportunity for female choreographers to come together at a platform where the founders, H.Noble and J.Coulston, are trying to find the answer to this question whilst giving female choreographers to network and present their works. I have looked further in to this and have not found any data following up on this.

This article was written before the platform event by the founders of FCC. Here we get an insight in to the thought process behind the set up of the company as well as their mission statement and which direction they want the company to head. The article is very clear, however, I am not sure how well it has been circulated and how many female choreographers have seen this so as to be able to utilise their services. Contact details have been included in the article so I have emailed them and asking about the outcome of the platform as well as asking their current theories on why there are not so many high profile female choreographers. I have not yet had a reply. 

Quick question ... please help!

Does anyone know if we have to review all of the literature we use in our ‘analysis of findings’ as part of ‘evaluation of process’?

Or

Do we just review a couple of key pieces of literature to show that we can effectively review a piece of literature?

Your help would be greatly appreciated as I am a bit stuck … I have a lot of material but don’t know what to do with it!

Em 

No more procrastination!

Hi All!

I am very pleased that i have been able to finish a piece of written work that i have just sent to Alan for some feedback. After a lot of procrastinating on this piece I now feel very motivated to get the rest of it done.

Looking at the slide show on Paula's blog about the 3rd campus session has really helped focus my ideas and I now know how to structure the inquiry. If you haven't seen it yet i would take a look, very helpful:

http://paulanottingham.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/campus-session-3-slides-for-module-3.html


On another note ... I am thinking about writing a journalistic article to be published in a dance magazine (eg. dancing times, dance europe) aiming at young professional performers about how they can start and the process it takes to become a choreographer with useful hints and tips.

What do you think?

Em

Writers Block

I am currently experiencing writers block …

I think I am trying to tackle too many things at once, which isn’t helping. I really need to think about the order in which I need to complete tasks (set by myself). I also realised that I haven’t been planning any of my written work I have just sat down and started writing with no real idea of where my writing is going. I used to love planning and creating spider diagrams of all the things I wanted to include then figure out a logical order to put them in, it really helped to structure my work. So I have answered my own problem:

1)    Write out an order of the tasks I need to tackle

2)    Plan the piece or writing

3)    Write out the piece

Jacob posted about the plans to incorporate skype in to the campus sessions in his post entitled "Link Tank". I am very excited to try this for the next campus session on the 13^th March as I feel I have missed out on a lot by not being able to attend. I hope there will be some discussion on ethics and literature reviews as those are the two areas I am having trouble with.

What do you think about the use of skype in the campus sessions? It would be nice to hear some of your thoughts.

Em 

So far so good ...

I completed my second interview a couple of weeks ago. I think it went well and I did gain more information and insight from it. However, I had family cruising at the time so I was slightly distracted. I think i could have been a bit more thorough but for the most part it was helpful towards my inquiry.

I am still waiting on my 3rd interviewee to get back to me but in the mean time am writing out my literature reviews. I found it hard initially as my inquiry topic is about opinions and experiences rather than facts and figures. However, after Skyping with Alan, I realised it is ok for me to research well known choreographers and see how they made the transition. With the limited literature I found,with snippets of biographies and newspaper reports, I could connect the dots and make some educated guesses on how they made the transition using the information I have from my interviewees.

From there I can start sending Alan some of my work to get some feedback.

I hope every one else is going strong with their inquiry.

Em x

So far so good ...

I completed my second interview a couple of weeks ago. I think it went well and I did gain more information and insight from it. However, I had family cruising at the time so I was slightly distracted. I think i could have been a bit more thorough but for the most part it was helpful towards my inquiry.

I am still waiting on my 3rd interviewee to get back to me but in the mean time am writing out my literature reviews. I found it hard initially as my inquiry topic is about opinions and experiences rather than facts and figures. However, after Skyping with Alan, I realised it is ok for me to research well known choreographers and see how they made the transition. With the limited literature I found,with snippets of biographies and newspaper reports, I could connect the dots and make some educated guesses on how they made the transition using the information I have from my interviewees.

From there I can start sending Alan some of my work to get some feedback.

I hope every one else is going strong with their inquiry.

Em x

Rereading the Ethics Handbook

So if I didn’t understand 99% of this hand book reading it for the fist time, I still don’t understand 97% rereading it.

I managed to get a few useful points that I should think about whilst researching and putting my inquiry together. However, for the most part this didn’t help me.

Does anyone have any suggestions of other sources and literature I could read on ethics that may be more comprehensible?

Thanks

Em 

Interviews

I had my first interview last week and it went really well!
I found an application that attaches to Skype so you can record your call and it saves it as a .mov file. This was so helpful!

Hopefully I will have my second interview on wednesday and it will be just as successful. My third one is going to be different as it is difficult for me to arrange a time to call my interviewee, so I have emailed her the questions and she is going to email me the answers back. I think this will be interesting as I will be able to compare the spoken interview to the written interview and see the positives and negatives of each!

Em :)

Interview Questions

Hi all!

I haven't blogged in a long time due to lots of things going on with work contracts. However, I am back now and ready to get my artifact on the go!

The fist thing on my to do list was to work out questions for my interview. I have chosen to interview 3 choreographers on how they transitioned from performers to choreographers. I did this and sent it to alan, with some improvements, these are the question/question topicsIi came up with:

Interview Question Topics

1)    What sparked your interest in choreography?

a)     What attracts you to choreography? e.g. the creative activity? Collaborating with choreographers? The freedom? Other reasons?     

b)    Did you study choreography whilst in formal training?

c)     Did your dance training impact you choreography or your self image as a choreographer?

2)    What was your first professional job as a choreographer?

a)     Where were you working?

b)    Who for?

c)     Did you already know them?

d)    What prior experience did you have? eg. Amateur or unpaid work?

e)     How did you feel about the job?

i)               Going in to it?

ii)             The outcome?

iii)            Was it in you preferred style?

f)     How did you gain the job?

g)     Where/how did you find out about it?

3)    Can you explain what motivated you to make the transition from performer choreographer?

-       Tell me about your experiences along the path from your initial decision to make choreography your career to the point you feel you became an established choreographer in the dance community.

a)     Why did you choose these paths? Were they the only option for you?

b)    In hind sight, with the knowledge you now have, would you have chosen a different rout to take?

c)     Which moment do you feel were your key turning points?

4)    What attributes do you think helped you to get where you are as a choreographer?

- Attributes: personal qualities, such as perseverance through the highs and lows.

a)     To make the transition from performer to choreographer?

b)    To gain work?

c)     To network?

d)    To choreograph?

5)    Do you still perform?

a)     Why did you make this decision/why not?

b)    Which do you prefer, performing or choreographing? Why?

c)     Do you choreograph on yourself or do you prefer to perform others works?

d)     If still performing: Do you think you will continue to perform for as long as you can physically?

If not: would you consider performing again?

e)  What is the impact of your continued dance practice on your choreography? And vice versa?

6)    Where do/did you find job opportunities as a choreographer?

a)     Is there a website that has job listings like ones for performing auditions?

b)    Was networking your primary tool?

c)     How did you start your network?

7)    Is there any advice you would give to performers aspiring to become choreographers?

            

Let me know what you think :)