You are the Expert!

 As we start the term I felt compelled to write a post about the concept of expertise and how in fact all of you on this course have it with particular regard to your own practice. The word expert itself come from the past participle of the latin word experiri which means to try or to test, the past participle being expertus having tried and having tested, and this is what we do throughout practice. These trials and tests that we face whether in creating a new piece of work, adapting to someone else's work or indeed in doing a degree and processes through which expertise is forged. 

Having both studied academic qualifications as well as gaining practice experience I have experienced the different ways expertise is forged and find myself sitting at an interesting intersection between academic and practice expertise, a place, which by the end of this course, you will join me at. Degrees are quite formal processes in appearance, you have a syllabus with learning outcomes that you study and as you progress you are tested in your development of knowledge and once these tests are taken, and you have been through a state of expertus you will be deemed an expert. But this standardised format is not the only way your expertise is forged. 

You are all already experts in your fields through the various experiences you have forged, but above that you are experts in yourself and your capabilities in relation to your disciplines. You have already tested and tried practice from the first note made or first step taken through your training, your practice and rehearsals. Everything done in your discipline to this point, the start of your BA in professional practice, makes you an expert this course is to give you the framework to fully realise this expertise you hold and to gain new levels of expertise in the process.

For those of you starting at Module 1 you have all of your practice up till this point to draw on in your critical reflection assignments. You can employ your expertise in your own journey and drawn on the expertise of others to dissect and analyse practice to this point to determine what can be drive forward. 

To those of you in Module 2 you will learn how you can start to structure your own expertise in an academic form picking up the crucial foundation tools of a study. The research proposal is your chance to determine how you can use your skills in practice to explore a further deepening of an area of investigation, the literature review allows you to engage with the expertise of others to deepen your thoughts and the ethics form can show you how to structure the moralities of investigation and practice.  

Module 3 will help you solidly an expertise in academia, investigation and reflection. You will finally realise a fully fledged academic study of an area of your practice, conduct a full investigation collating the literature you gather, primary data collected through methods such as surveys and interviews and triangulating them with personal expertise and experience. 

This week the staff team were asked to share our routes into practice, which in effect led all of us to consider where does our expertise come from. I shared with some of you my formative experiri. When around the age of 14 or so I began playing clarinet at jazz jam nights. I dug up an old photo I had on social media of one such performance when I was about 16 playing at the pub on Pannal train station in Yorkshire. I would often go there and play with the house band the Watermelon Men standards like Autumn Leaves, Blue Monk or some Benny Goodman. In this experience I tested out and tried improvisations and how to perform with a band. After many years I had expertise in this as a result of such experiri. Perhaps you could share an example of experiri in your practice in the comments below! 

A Summer of Practice

 Welcome! or Welcome back! As we head into autumn and the leaves fall off metaphorical and literal trees it is a great time to reflect on the old and and begin to grow the new! For creatives we are slowly being allowed with the easing of restrictions to return to performing practice, in many cases with precautions in place, but the feeling of being able to perform has for me been quite cathartic and rejuvenating. The group I perform with Me & My Friends have played several festivals this year, each of which being a valuable experience. 

The first festival we did, Camp Kin, was a chance to perform line the music we had made in lockdown live for the first time. It was interesting seeing which live arrangements resonated with a festival audience and which didn't and seeing audiences relearn their role in the transaction of performance starting a bit wary and nervous to dancing by the end of the set. It felt as performers we had to give them permissions to dance and become involved and bring them into the empty space in front of the stage, it was fascinating to see them relearn how to have such experiences. See a short clip of that performance here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSeCvgTC8kc/ 

The second gig we did was at the Landworkers Alliance skills festival which was a weekend of workshops about sustainable agriculture with music thrown in. We arrived on a Sunday which is always a tough day to play as many people have checked out and ready to go home but his crowd had a relaxed desire to embody the music in any way possible. Before we played a Celidh band were performing and calling out set dances then they had a festival closing ceremony which bizarrely involved burning a wicker statue whilst people did random dancing around it, so they were already warmed up. Noticing this we adapted our set to what we call a 'bangers set' with all high energy tunes, this paid off with audiences dancing as can be seen here. We also played on a specially adapted truck that folded out into a stage which was a really cool concept. 

The final festival we did was at Purbeck Valley Folk festival, the big learning curb from this experience was the importance of preparation for sound tech. At the two previous festivals we had as long as we liked to sound check, get PA and monitor levels but at this festival we only had 30 mins which is not a lot of time at all especially when you have temperamental instrument mics for clarinet and cello. Throughout the set the sound kept cutting out in monitors and we lost cello sound front of house throughout causing the sound engineer to run on stage and switch cables. This can be really dejecting as a performer when it isn't going well! It was interesting to see how the band individually responded to the moment with some telling jokes, some acknowledging the issue and waiting for its resolution. It made me consider coping strategies around technical issues. They were eventually resolved to a passable level where we could play a bonanza of 6 high tempo songs in a row winning the crowd over but I couldn't help but feel disappointed with the performance and the lack of technical checks offered. As it wasn't great we didn't take any video on stage.