Award Specialism title

Title: BA (Hons) Professional Practice in Arts (Performing Arts)

My rationale is as follows:

When deciding on questions for my professional inquiry, I wanted to do something that would not only help my profession but my professional colleagues and anyone else in the performing arts sector. I wanted to choose something that I have knowledge on, like the dance world, but also extend my knowledge to all of the performing arts so that I can learn new things. I have chosen to focus on funding in the arts because I feel that it is something that some students struggle with after they leave college if they want to start their own projects, with regards to where to find it, if they are eligible to get it, how to receive it and what are the terms of the funding. It will also be beneficial for me to research for future reference if I ever wanted to start my own dance school or performing arts project.
The purpose of the inquiry is to find out what performers and non-performers know about funding, how I can get more information out there about funding, how funding cuts are affecting the arts council and other funding establishments and hopefully give all artistic professions more of an idea of what help they can get.

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This is a draft version of my rationale, any comments or advice about how to improve it would be very helpful.
Thank you!

Task 6a- Finding the right Inquiry tools for me

It is crucial for this Inquiry to find the right tools that work for us. The tools that we can use are; observation, interview, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires, diaries/journals and literary research. Of course we can't use all of the tools because it would be too time consuming and we probably wouldn't have time to analyse it all.

Observation 

This involves watching, recording and analysing events of interest. The observation method can be very time consuming because you have to observe classes or have to fit into someone else's schedule. It can be difficult to collect all the data that you need because you may not see anything of interest when you are observing. On the other hand it can be a very useful tool because usually in observation the participants aren't talking and therefore you can pick up on the behavioural side of things. 

Interviews

This involves asking questions to people that have experience and knowledge of your subject. You can have varied interview types like; semi structured, open interviews and informal interviews. You have to pick which one is most beneficial for your inquiry and which will give the data that you need. Before you do an interview, you have to consider where it will take place? What information do you need to collect? Why have I chosen this person to do the interview? How will you record the information? Is everything going to be on the record? Will all the interviews include the same questions, if not why not? What is the structure of the interview? So there are a lot of things to take into consideration and it can be very time consuming. But also you can uncover data that you didn't think was there.

Focus groups

Focus groups are similar to interviews. You have a group of people all with knowledge on your topic area and you ask the questions. The positive thing about focus groups is you can collect a lot of data because of how many people are giving their opinion. It also allows people to debate within the group giving you ideas you didn't have before and you wouldn't have got with a one on one interview. The down side is it can be hard to control. If lots of people are talking at once it could be impossible to analyse the data and the group could be taken off topic with the flow of the conversation. If you choose this method, you need to know how to control the group and keep on topic. Maybe you want participants to state their name before they talk so there's no confusion. 

Surveys and questionnaires 

Surveys and questionnaires are a good way to get quantitative results. To ensure that you get feasible data from these surveys you have to make sure you ask a range of people. Surveys are usually quite a popular tool because it is relatively easy for participants to do. Surveys aren't time consuming and it isn't an ongoing process. With surveys you need to make sure your questions make sense, they are in the right order and it looks presentable. You also need to know which type of questions you're going to use e.g. yes or no questions or questions where the participants are given the option to write their opinions. The participants need to know why they are taking part in the survey and need to be thanked after. The down side of surveys and questionnaires is you may not get in depth answers to help with your inquiry or enough people to take part which will affect the reliability of your data. 

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To help me know what tools I want to use I have decided to do a pilot survey. I have included yes or know questions, questions that give participants the option to give their opinion and questions that have more narrative responses. I would really appreciate people taking part, it will only take a couple of minutes because it isn't that long. 

My Survey

Any feedback would be very helpful! Thank you.

Bibliography

Reader 6 (2015-16), BAPP, Middlesex University 

Task 5b and 5c- Ethics

Task 5b-

After thinking of what ethics there were relating to dance based solely on my own thoughts, I researched professional sources to see what else there was. I found a very interesting article on a website called Dance Archives written by Anna Malitowska called Dancers' Professional Ethics. Malitowska writes 'Fulfilling professional duties may not, in such a case, be justified by ones own moral expectations but by social expectations'. I think this is very important to understand because when you are in a professional working environment you have to obey the rules that are set out to you, not the ones you set out yourself. Malitowska's list of a dancers duties include;

• A duty to improve one's skill
• A duty to care for the image of the profession
• Building trust between fellow professionals and care for their reputation
• A duty to respect other individuals, including their freedom to create
• A professional dancer is obliged to support and actively help others realise their professional goals
• To not blindly follow someone else's steps but to use someones advice in agreement with one's self-knowledge. 

I think that these points are very useful and have helped me see more ethical and moral duties of a dancer. I also wanted to research the ethical issues of a teacher. I found this website Ethical standards for teaching that talks about the purpose of ethical standards and what they are. It is a flyer written by Ontario college of teachers. The purpose of ethical standards include;

• To inspire members to reflect and uphold the honour and dignity of the teaching profession
• To identify the ethical responsibilities and commitments in the teaching profession
• To guide ethical decisions and actions in the teaching profession
• To promote public trust and confidence in the teaching profession

Their ethical standards for teaching are;

• Care-Compassion, acceptance, interest and insight for developing students potential
• Trust-Fairnesss, openness and honesty, professional relationships are built on trust
• Respect-Members honour human dignity and emotional wellness and cognitive development
• Integrity-Continual reflection assists members in exercising integrity in their professional commitment and responsibilities.   

I feel that this further research has expanded my knowledge on ethical standards and will help me approach my inquiry with the ethical standards that have been written by me in the previous task and researched in this one. 

Task 5c-Reader 5 Ethics

Reader 5 is quite a lot to take in but I feel that I have expanded my knowledge of ethics and will be able to confidently apply it to my Inquiry. Ethics is a difficult subject because it is not black and white, it isn't as easy as saying this is right and this is wrong. It is open to interpretation and what the moral standards of society are, may not be the moral standards of your personal life that you like to live by. There's a sort of grey area in the middle where there is a lot of uncertainty. The development of ethics can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks code of ethics was concerned with the 'good' or the 'right' way to carry out actions and keep a civil society. The evolution of ethics involves digging deeper into what is perceived as 'good'. 

For Aristotle, ethics is manifested in 'habitual actions'. For example it is not good enough to be honest every Friday but instead you must be honest everyday. Immanuel Kant (1779) believed that moral rules are absolute and you should help people in need no matter what you feel or want. He also believes that lying is always wrong in any situation. This contrasts with JS Mill's view, who believes that if the overall outcome is for the greater good then it can be done, even if the action is questionable in terms of morals. For example if you need to kill one kitten to save 12 kittens, then your action is justified. 

Therefore morals and ethics are interchangeable between each person and what I find acceptable other people may not. The moral structure of society and your personal views can change and what morals you live by now may not be the morals you live by in 20 years. For example, up until 1967 homosexuality was illegal but now the position has changed and homosexuals rights are protected and since March 2014 same sex marriage has been legalised. On the other hand same sex marriage is still not legal in Australia. So even though we as a society in the UK have moved forward, what we accept as our cultural norm, is not accepted everywhere.

Another issue which Ethics is when our personal ethics conflict with our professional ethics. There can sometimes be tensions between personal ethics, professional ethics and employers expectations. For example a Catholic nurse is asked to assist in terminating a pregnancy but the rules of the Catholic Church say she is forbidden. It puts people in impossible situations. At what point do you let your own moral standards slip in order to keep your job? It's an impossible question to answer and thankfully not one that I've had to answer yet but definitely something that I will take into consideration when writing my inquiry.

Planning the our inquiry includes planning what ethical considerations we will take into account. We have to think about who it is benefitting, what we hope to gain and how we will go about handling our data and our treatment of the participants. This includes addressing our participants with respect and writing about them in a respectful way. Making sure our participants know that they can leave the inquiry if they want to. Making sure our questions aren't biased or urging the participant to give the answer we want to hear. I will be expanding on these points in my Inquiry and in my Ethics form.

Any feedback or thoughts would be very helpful!

Bibliography

Anna Malitowska (2012) Dancers' Professional Ethics, Dance Archives

Ontario College of teachers https://www.oct.ca/-/media/PDF/Standards%20Poster/standards_flyer_e.pdf

Reader 5 (2015), Middlesex University

Literature Research

It has proved very difficult to find any literary research based on my topic of Inquiry. I have decided to expand my questions, so that I can find more information about funding in the UK.

What funding is there for all the Arts from the Government and other funding companies?
How easy is it to get funding for a project e.g. opening up an arts school or company?
How are funding cuts affecting our economy?
How many non artists/artists go to watch theatre, singing, poetry or dancing? And how often?
How many arts organisations are being affected or shut down by government funding cuts?

I found this interesting article by The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/arts-funding-cuts-regions-badly-affected-econom-ic-stupidity

The article concentrates on Birmingham and Newcastle but still gives an insight to government cuts. In 2010 the cuts in Birmingham to arts organisations was 17% in 2010 and 20% in 2013 (The Guardian, 2015). In Newcastle 2012 the council threatened to reduce its budget by 100%, in the end they were still cut by 50%. This reveals along with other statistics I have found that government cuts happen every year and they show that the percentage goes up each time.

Clare Brennan, who wrote the article, pointed out that 'flourishing arts attracts attention, signal prosperity and encourage investors...cities with high tourist numbers have flourishing cafes, shops and theatre'. George Osbourne recognised the importance of putting money into the arts "£1bn of funding adds a quarter of a trillion pounds to the economy-not a bad return". So isn't it in our best interest to put money into the arts and fund new projects?

With regards to my question about how many people are there going to watch arts productions, I'm going to set up a survey for my fellow students on Survey Monkey, so lots of participants would be really helpful. I will then give the same survey to non artists and compare the results. I will put the survey up on my next blog post and I hope to find some more literary research surrounding my topic.