The greatest show on (physiotherapy) earth

Only two weeks to go now until the greatest show on (physiotherapy) earth gets under way.

WCPT Cape Town will be a smorgasbord of ideas, people, meetings, presentations, and inspiration, and the Critical Physiotherapy Network will be there in force.

If you’re attending the Congress and would like to find out more about the Network, you can pop into our Focused Symposium, which will be in Ballroom East on Monday 3rd July from 10:45-12:15pm.  There, Barbara Gibson, Jenny Setchell, Viviana Silva, Mershen Pillay and I will be presenting some ideas about critical thinking in physiotherapy and discussing how physiotherapy might move forward from here.

But the biggest CPN-specific event will be our CPN Salon: our mini-conference held the day after WCPT closes.  If you’d like to attend, you still can.  There are very limited spaces left, but you can book your place by emailing Jenny Setchell (jennysetchell@gmail.com).  If you’d like to participate in the day but can’t be in Cape Town, there will be some opportunities for people to connect in remotely.  If you’d like to participate, email me (david.nicholls@aut.ac.nz) and we’ll help you get connected.

The image above shows the venue for the Salon.

The day begins at 10am with an introduction from Jenny Setchell – facilitator for the day.  At 10:30 I’ll be summarising how far the 3-year-old CPN has come, before our first keynote at 11 from Wenche Bjorbækmo (‘More than a touch of physiotherapy – an embodied practice of negotiating proximity and distance’).   There’s a remarkable Scandinavian presence in the CPN, and Wenche’s work epitomises that.  At 12, Barbara Gibson and Jenny will lead a one-hour interactive conversation with the group, challenging us to think critically.  Then lunch.

After lunch we have our second keynote: Mershen Pillay and Harsha Kathard will present on ‘Whiteness and rehabilitation: A critical review’.  Mershen and Harsha have been working for years in the field of decolonisation in Africa, and other countries around the world, and their reflections on the white colonisation of rehabilitation promises to be a challenging and thought provoking session.  At 3pm, Nicky Wilson will lead the final session of the day on some strategic thinking for the future of the CPN.  This session will link in with the brilliant CPN colloquium running concurrently in Cardiff, and facilitated by Gwyn Owen and Graeme Paul-Taylor.  The day will end with some concluding dialogues facilitated by Jenny.

A full programme of the day can be downloaded here.

If you are going to WCPT, it would be lovely to see you there.  Don’t stand on ceremony…if you see one of us there, come up and say hello.  If you’re going to Cardiff, or connecting in virtually, we look forward to spending time with you and getting to know how you’d like the CPN to grow.