I recently had a very enjoyable holiday with my brother who was visiting New Zealand for the first time. At a cafe filled with follies and other quirky craft pieces I asked by brother - who is an accomplished photographer and teacher - what the difference was between an artist and someone's who's good with crafts. His answer has stuck with me ever since. "Artists", he said "deal with problems." The example he used was of Grayson Perry, a ceramicist who makes replica Greek urns. Amongst the ceramics community, Perry's pots divide opinions. Some with a stronger interest in the technical craft of ceramics deride his work as sloppy and poorly constructed. But what makes Perry an … [Read more...] about What’s the difference between a technician and an artist?
Art as therapy
I spent the last two weeks in Norway and Denmark, meeting clinicians, lecturers, researchers and students, and generally talking about The End of the Physiotherapy. I spent quite a bit of time talking about the ways physiotherapy might transform itself to adapt to the future, and one of the ideas we kept coming back to was the importance of 'leaving' the profession. I wrote a little about this idea in a blog post just before I set out for Scandinavia, and the subject kept recurring during my visit. The biggest issue for many people seemed to be not so much the need to change, as much as how to change: how to find new ways of thinking and practicing physiotherapy that kept the best of … [Read more...] about Art as therapy
Reflections on a tweet/Why I joined the CPN
CPN member Blaise Doran responded our call-out to members to write a short statement about why or how they have found their way to a CPN so we could use them as testimonials. However his response was so interesting (and too long for a testimonial) we thought it would work better in a blog post. Blaise Doran BSc (Physio.), GradDip (Neuro. Rehab.), MSc (Pain Mgt.) originally trained and worked in the UK. He is a physiotherapist and the coordinator for the Children’s Pain Management Clinic at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Previously he worked predominantly in adult neurological rehabilitation. Prior to undertaking his physiotherapy degree, he worked for ten years as … [Read more...] about Reflections on a tweet/Why I joined the CPN
30 Days of September: Day 29
Today's image was suggested by Bhanu Ramaswamy. Click on the image to open it to full size. You can then save it and turn it into a desktop background by following these brief instructions. … [Read more...] about 30 Days of September: Day 29
Creativity in physiotherapy
Anyone who lives with, knows, or has trained as an artist will be painfully aware of how lacking in creativity a lot of physiotherapy education and practice is. My brother is a photographer and a teacher, and I am frequently reminded of how differently he responds to things. Where he often thinks like an artist, I often default to the kinds of design-thinking that Grace Jeffers talks about when she says that "Design thinking is about solving a problem, but art thinking is about feeling your way to a solution" (link). It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with the way physiotherapists are trained to think - there's certainly a lot to be said for the kinds of deductive … [Read more...] about Creativity in physiotherapy
Karl Marx would have loved physiotherapy
There's a great thesis to be written on the politics of physiotherapy. It would include something about how the profession fought hard to become an ally to governments looking to return men to the Western Front during World War I. It would look at the ways physiotherapists transferred this experience into rehabilitation and ensured people returned to work as soon as possible so that they would be productive members of society, rather than a 'drain' on the State or their communities. It might even look at how largely silent physiotherapy has been about social inequality and injustice, and how we have managed to convince ourselves that for more than 100 years that physiotherapy was … [Read more...] about Karl Marx would have loved physiotherapy
Wenche S. Bjorbækmo – The art of presenting qualitative research – 30DoS #24
In this post, physiotherapist and educator Wenche Bjorbækmo writes about the art of presenting qualitative research. The first time I saw the film The Cost of Living, by DV8 Physical Theatre[1] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZTMyWt50kk), it made an indelible impression on me. Over the course of a few late summer days in an English seaside resort, two out-of-work street performers -- Eddie and David -- encounter a variety of other people on the fringe of society. Dave, a double amputee, is determined to hold on to his independence, while tough, aggressive Eddie is a stalwart defender of justice and respect. The play presents a sequence of human tableaux that challenge our … [Read more...] about Wenche S. Bjorbækmo – The art of presenting qualitative research – 30DoS #24