To create my biog I had a look at past and present BAPP students blogs and also looked at some colleagues. I like to see examples before I actually take the plunge ! I have written a biography before , but it was longer and edited to suit that current practice and employer.
This made me consider at which point do I enter the 'Kolb cycle of learning ?' Kolb's learning cycle is a theory developed by David A. Kolb , which was published in 1984.
In this case I feel I started at reflective observation and continued around in the cycle.
( Image by Davis & Lowe)
I also looked at my CV for some inspiration. My CV didn't initially help much though, as it is 4 pages long!! I’m sure many other performers have extended CV’s too!! It definitely needed trimming down!
Not every professional engagement needed to be detailed on my CV, just the important ones. However it is difficult deciding between which ones to feature on there. Surely it’s important that every future employer needs to know that I ran away to dance at a Mexican circus ?!
I think often we confuse fond memories with important contracts when writing a CV. Sometimes it’s better to take a step back and attempt to disconnect emotionally , to focus on the key points.
I’m lucky to have a 4 page CV as I do feel that every job/contract led onto the other and paved the path to where I am now. It is hard to succeed as a full time professional performer and it’s great to have a CV to prove that I managed it in my ‘heyday’. However times have changed and casting directors simply don’t have time to trawl through pages and pages of information. Short and concise is definitely the way forward.
In making my presentation for my blog I also managed to shorten my CV and improve it, so it was a very productive task for me. After my CV was more organised it was much easier to write my blog intro. It was easier to find the key points that I wanted to feature, and the ones I wanted to leave out. There weren't enough characters available on the blog 'about you ' section for me to feature lots of details on separate jobs , so I tried to do an overview. I decided to write it from my perspective so it made it a little more personal. After all this blog will have many personal thoughts relating to my practise, so I felt that was the best way to approach it.
I decided to keep my blog intro based on my professional life , rather than adding too many personal details. I am quite a private person usually and very aware of the data presented online. I would consider myself to be private until you really get to know me and then I let my guard down a little more. I also feel it's important to keep a barrier in your professional practice , so if I am teaching a group of students I wouldn't feel comfortable about them knowing a lot about my life as I see that as personal. I'm friendly with them , but professional. It's all about getting the balance right.
With Web 2.0 making interaction so much easier and normalised I always make sure my social media is private. For safe guarding it's important to have a different name on Facebook eg a nickname or even your own name but just making sure your settings are set to private. Otherwise there would be so many student friend requests and potential messages from students. I feel it's important to keep that professional boundary. Plus at many performing arts schools it would be forbidden to interact with or befriend any student on social media.
Years ago, when I was performing, social media wasn't as used or even available as it is now. But when I did start using social media I always made sure I presented myself in the best possible way with any posts , photos etc
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