Contacting Practitioners

Due to faffing around worrying about my topic, I haven't actually contacted anyone yet which is worrying me more!

I have written out a draft email send to a list of professionals within the art therapy industry, that Sharon Heleine provided for me a few months back (that I still haven't used, sorry Sharon!) 
In my defence this was because from my first feedback I got the impression that art therapy was too much of a far fetched topic to explore, however I believe that asking a few questions may help me on my way to start researching specific areas of social responsibility.

This took me so long to write out, its scary having to try and sound professional when you are a student.

So I hope that sounds substantial/not too vague? I will write another post if I am lucky enough to gain any response!

Defining My Topic

I fully admit that I have been slacking on the COP front because I'm totally overwhelmed about the whole project, hence the lack of blog posts. 

Like every beginning of module, I freak out because I don't know where I am going in terms of direction. I don't trust myself enough to let go and explore, which usually results in me taking a safer and more structured option where I can lay out my perfectionist habits to make myself feel comfortable, thus resulting in an outcome that does not show my full potential.

So out comes the trusty mind map! This kind of helped me to focus down a few main areas of specific interest:

• The role and responsibility of the illustrator as educator
• How socially engaged creative practice can be used to reduce social isolation
• The use of emotion within illustration; how it challenges notions of consumerism

I sent Pete an email two weeks ago when I was in Leeds, and luckily managed to bump into him to briefly discuss my progress.

So the plan for now is to keep reading, find some more people to contact- perhaps teachers of art and illustrators who have a lot of campaign or charity work within their practice. And not to stress out of course!

First Dissertation Feedback

I had my first email from Pete yesterday with some feedback from my proposal. The feedback was very constructive, but at the same time left me a bit bewildered because I was really quite set on basing my research on art therapy, which he advised against due to being a post-graduate level of study which isn't very practical to investigate when not studying a medical degree right now.

Pointers:

• My proposal is still really broad, it needs narrowing down
• Where do I see this going? What do I want the focus to be? What are the links with illustration and communication?
• Interrogate the question, the impact of social responsibility on the role and function of illustration. How does it fit in with these areas? What is feasible in the space of time you have?
• Consider the Adbusters quote; is design challenging consumerism? What’s going on at the moment – activism how does that relate to the first things first manifesto 2000? Could you find case studies and illustrators to support this idea?
•   From the images you have chosen, there does appear to be an interest the visual language of healthcare, it is an intriguing idea – how would it be approached?
• Medical design for sterility, hygiene and efficiency, has positive and negative associations. Newer approaches to healthcare environments and materials have developed to respond to these associations. It does seem to touch on the aesthetics and style question.
• There is an interesting (and controversial) link between the drugs industry and the capitalism, the examples of drug packets on the last page and the links Jeremy Owen makes to social responsibility could be a plausible way of combining a few of these ideas?

After reading this I feel pretty lost and unsure of which direction I want to take. I think the best thing to do is just take a step back for a week or two and think things over; read some books, newspapers and articles that could point me in the right direction. 

OUIL501 End of Module Evaluation

Being familiar with the layout of COP from last year, I was able to start the module and structure my ways of working more clearly and efficiently. Additionally, my starting point of 'how we can save the NHS' was something that I was, and still am passionate about which encouraged me to elaborate to a greater extent within my written and practical work. 

One of the main things that I struggled with was how to structure the argument within my essay, as I found that in my first few drafts I was just outlining the problems within the NHS rather than coming up with an argument or statement in able to potentially solve the issue. I was able to build on this by synthesising the content of my essay by looking at the psychology behind different methods of persuasive advertising, and the extent of how language and imagery together can be an extremely powerful force. This lead me to look at the effectiveness of advertisements developed by the food industry and fast food corporations, versus the campaigns launched by the Public Health sector of the UK Government in trying to combat 'avoidable' health conditions such as type two diabetes. Building on my academic writing skills enabled me to consider more deeply and reflect upon different writers and authors statements in relation to health and to advertising, for example learning how to triangulate and paraphrase allowed me to make connections with similar views and opinions to create a stronger argument.

I definitely feel as though my written work is the stronger section of my submission, partly due to the fact that I allocated myself the most time for this section and also that I surprisingly enjoyed writing it! This has reinforced the concept that having a broad knowledge of a subject area allows the exploration of visual solutions to be limitless, simultaneously thinking on a wider scale of how to communicate the facts that I know to a specific audience or group. 
In terms of research, there is a great deal of news items concerning the state of the NHS and public health currently, which was really helpful as I was able to visually respond to articles on a weekly basis which significantly increased my levels of motivation and interest in the subject. Although in hindsight, I think this aspect made me rather complacent in the fact that a lot of the time I would solely rely on secondary research as opposed to taking the extra step to gather research first hand, which could have lead to a more effective outcome. For example, I think that if I would have interviewed members of staff in the NHS, and possibly people that were willing to talk about their experiences with lifestyle related illnesses, this would have given me more of a personal and accurate perspective of surrounding issues.

Unfortunately I have to admit that there are a lot of weak areas in my submission, and work ethic in general during COP2. If I am being completely honest, my attitude towards this module have been somewhat poor and I'm pretty disappointed with myself as a result of this. This is partly due to the fact that COP is a 'long thin module', which means that there isn't a greater sense of urgency to complete and develop work in a short period of time, and it isn't prioritised as much as the more heavily practical based modules, meaning that it 'feels like we have ages' to build a substantial body of work. 
Despite this, I think that when I got on a roll with productivity, my interests and enthusiasm was amplified which lead me to developing new ways of working that I never would have considered before, for example the comic strips showing the reaction and thought processes when trying to lose weight in an environment that is suffocated by consumerism. However this didn't serve me too well when it came to producing the final publication, as I did NOT anticipate the length of time required to produce a comic... which resulted in me rushing a lot of things at the last minute which jeopardised the level of quality within my work.

The past two years my very first starting point from the given list has been 'social', which has lead me to develop a huge interest in the human condition and explore different types of behaviour and interaction. This is something that I am keen to take forward into the COP3 research project, which I am thinking at this stage about looking into how visual aids can be a more powerful means of communication within the healing environment and other non-consumerist based areas and organisations. As COP3 is a pretty big deal, I will take my experiences from COP2 to build on my strengths and capitalise on my weaknesses, which include; carrying out more personal-based research, PLANNING MY TIME WELL, anticipating the length of time required to create practical solutions and generally having a more positive and enthusiastic attitude towards the module.

Final Publication

COP2 Final Essay

COP3 Proposal