Emily Smith BA (Hons) Professional Practice, Arts and Creative Industries Blog

It's getting closer and closer to the deadline date and the stress levels are rising! I have been in a constant battle with Internet signal recently and feel like I am running out of time! Strangely, the essay seems to feel like it's in a good place which would normally be the hard part, however my motivation and creative flow for the artefact is coming in slowly! I have decided to make up a dance to represent my inquiry and time on this course, however I feel like I am having a choreographic block as I know I have to get this dance out and recorded before the 10th! It's like my brain and body are going against me!  Tomorrow is a new day and I have a tutorial on Friday so maybe this will make me feel more positive!  HOPE EVERYONE IS DOING WELL!!! 

This module have been overwhelming to say the least! I now realise how fortunate I was to start this course in the pandemic and have so much free time to focus on my work. This time round I am abroad in America, working a full time job, I have very limited wifi, I am also Injured and have had so many different distractions! I am proud that I have managed to find the time to do the work, I am just questioning if I've understood the task at hand and if it's to a good standard, but I guess that's what drafts are for! I have found analysing my data very hard! I understand what the data means to me, however getting it down on paper is much harder than I imagined! initially I was scared about interviewing people but that seems to have been the easy part!  I think at the end of the day we all need to remind ourselves that this Inquiry wasn't to solve anything or prove something right or wrong it is to develop our practice and have a greater understanding of our professional fi...

Some important points I got from this Zoom discussion… It was a small discussion with just 2 of us attending, which was beneficial as Helen asked us questions and we were encouraged to talk. I had a realisation that I think I was going down the trap of using literature to prove or disprove what my participants thoughts and then telling my opinion… So here are some useful points I wrote down in my note book… …. Be mindful of thinking that observations are themes Themes are things that come up many times over the data collected the literature and your experiences Don’t use the literature to prove or reject things. Don’t think of it a scientific report as this is irrelevant to an artistic research project. Use literature to raise more questions / bring in other discussions and perspectives. We spoke about reflecting and bringing yourself into the project and not just getting swamped in literature and your data collection Did anything go against your assumptions? What challenged your assum...

I have now conducted all 6 interviews and honestly it has left me with more questions than what I feel like have been answered... I guess it was never the aim to answer our inquiry and our supervisors have always emphasised this, but now I feel like I have so much more that I need to research or it has given me new questions that I could start completely separate research projects about.  I was shocked that everyones answers were so different and so different to my own perspective on ‘ how does social media effect a professional dancers body image’. Potential themes that have reoccured that now I am going to find new literature on are… Pressure    -Pressure with Dance specific body image   -Pressure to promote / market themselves online  The words  FIT a nd  ATHLETIC   came up multiple times Filter     -Filtering what you view online. All my participants said that they really carefully consider what types of accounts that...

My topic of research is focussed on body image and social media. I found this so interesting and wanted to share it on my blog.... Loose Women Body Stories Campaign  I am posting this blog in module 3, however I wrote this during my hotel quarantine after coming home from red list Brasil on the 17th of May 2021. Since choosing my topic of ‘How does social media effect a professional dancers body image”, with such a relevant, poignant subject in the 21st century with the boom and obsession with social media I am regularly seeing articles and information all the time about social media, editing photos and body image. Which is highlighting how big of an issue in the 21st century this is becoming!   The campaign poster shows all the loose women looking happy and confident in their natural bodies in various swimming costumes and bikinis, showing diversity and inclusion. Its what I would describe a ‘real’ looking photo.   Plymouth Live, 2021. Loose Women Body Stories Campaign ....

I just finished my first module 3 tutorial with my supervisor.  Things are starting to feel very real and time is starting to pass  quicker  than I could have imagined! Firstly we discussed that I want to change my data collection method slightly to face-to-face interviews, due to the change of my circumstances to me now living onboard a cruise ship and the lack of stable internet which comes with it!  I don’t think it would be wise for me to schedule interviews on zoom and then have a faulty connection and waste my participants time. Also now I have colleagues onboard with me that fit my research criteria, therefore I now wish to interview them. I will have to write about these changes in my final write up. I also asked about the literature review and it was said that it should be in more depth than the module 2 literature review by going in deeper with a few select texts that are relevant to our research. It was also stated that we might end up doing further resear...