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Irony

Logging on for the first time on here in a few months, I chuckled at the irony of a fresh-faced and slightly less world weary Tom back in early March, who found getting into Module Two difficult. Little did he know that that would be one of his lesser worries during the following six months.  I managed to do work on Module Two that I was pleased with. As I have attested to many times before, theoretical, written and (what I would call) traditional academic based work have not been my forté, so I was very pleased to come away with the grades I did over the last two modules.  As I have been thinking about the work I will carry out in Mod Three, I have thought about how our industry has changed, and how I have changed too. I have not been overly encouraged in general by the industry's finger pointing and lack of positive action during this time. However, it seems to me that those that have made the greatest strides in terms of coming back and presenting work, are those associated with
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Finding Out

I'm finding term two a little hard to get into, I'll be honest. It's partly down to the nice problem of being very busy, but also perhaps down to my lack of engagement. We've had a couple of skypes cancelled, and I couldn't make another, meaning I'm yet to have some peer discussion and find out exactly what it means to be doing Mod 2 and to find out what is expected of us for our body of work this term. I continue to find the academic language confusing, but I'm persevering! I am however, really looking forward to going into MDX tomorrow and attending the campus session. I'm eager to break down Mod 2's handbook so that when I return home, I can do so with the knowledge and confidence to write something that improves upon my work last term. I know that I want my inquiry to centre around comedy in musical theatre and related shows, but I don't know how to frame that. I still need to come up with the broad question I'm asking. What I am co
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Term 2

Greetings, all! This is just a very brief blog post to signify my getting back into the swing of things for Module 2. Over Christmas, I was in panto at the New Theatre Peterborough, which was a brilliant job, but I'm back and now ready to dive in. Module one was a huge learning curve for me. As someone who hasn't been in a more theory based learning environment for almost ten years, it was tough to get back into the swing of attending regular classes, finding time to do work and getting my usually spoken thoughts down into the written form. I am however, proud that I did manage to get my work in, and have passed on to module two, with whatever grade I end up with next month. I am just proud that I made it this far, as I have often given up or failed at things of this ilk in the past. For module two, I'm going to dedicate much more time to my practice, and try to engage much more with you all out there on your blogs too! Hopefully speak to all you module two peopl
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Skype Discussion 18/11/19

Hey everyone! Just putting down a few thoughts about last night's brilliant Skype. This was the first Skype I'd been a part of for a while, and it was really heartening to speak to a group of people who are all in the same boat as me. Obviously Laura and I have been bouncing ideas and essay point off each other, but it was good for us both to know that the wider community in the course are at a similar stage to us. We discussed how theories can relate to our practice. I've been looking at my practice and all of the areas of learning that are included in my essay. It has been useful to me to do that and map everything out, and then find literature and theories that relate to what I'm already doing. I find that the easier way round as it means the theories and practitioners I find fit my practice, rather than shoe-horning in theories to match that may not fully relate to my practice. We also spoke about the diagram, and I'm excited to develop that further know
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Web 2.0- Don't you love it when you can't see breakdowns on Spotlight?

I've been diving back in and have been thinking a lot about the Web 2.0 theory, and in particular, participation and ethics. I've never particularly been one for social media. Yes I have facebook, but only a comparatively small amount of friends. Instagram too, but the vapidity of posts often drive me away from it. Twitter is one I had always struggled with, but is actually going to be the focus of this post. I have had twitter for upwards of 10 years, however I have only properly started using it since turning professional. What has always struck me about it is the nature of duality the platforms have. I think we can divide Web 2.0 into clear groups. There are the groups that are used for productivity, discussion and the betterment of learning and business experiences. These would be platforms like Skype (that we use), Linked In etc. Even Wikipedia is a publicly collaborated forum and that has led to a vast expanse of knowledge available entirely for free at our fingertips
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Back to it.

For one reason or another over the last few weeks, I've not got around to doing much on the course. Ironically, this is partly down to my practice. Over the last week, I've spent some time reading up on blogs about what's been discussed, and re-reading the handbook. I was planning to attend the campus session yesterday, but ironically, my practice was what prevented me! I was at the press launch for the pantomime I'm doing this year in Peterborough. Fortunately, I have a great study partner for this course. My fiancé Laura was able to attend the campus session and as we were in a similar situation with our progress, it was really helpful to have a big discussion about everything last night. She was able to help me talk through the establishing of my practice. I tend to see things very black and white, and we were able to ascertain that there's actually a lot of great area for interpretation. Where I didn't think I used any real processes in my work, the disc
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Induction Follow Up

This time last week I was partaking in our Induction Skype for the course. It was good to finally get going after first applying for the course at the start of the year. The structure and content was explained to us by Helen, one of the Course Leaders who will be helping us on our BA journey. It was good to hear that there is a real sense of community around the course, and that although professional, the informality of the process is very calming, which is suited to how I work. I'm looking forward to the next Skype session, and in the meantime I thought I'd share my 3 points that I wrote on the study plan that I wanted to remind myself of in order to succeed on the course, in case it helps anyone else re-focus 1)     I need to work when I’m not busy and have the time (such as now) because when I get into the busier periods such as Christmas, that’s when I tend to stress more 2)     I need to trust that my knowledge of the industry is good, and my experiences have been
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