So Long…

As a child I loved drawing maps. I found it exciting to think that I could create whole worlds with just a pencil and paper. I would draw roads and islands and cities. I would spend hours in the attic of my parent’s house, hidden away and creating worlds to be explored. Putting together Kawa Creative has been, in some way, similar to this process. We have used the river at every turn, we have made plans and looked at different structures that we might put in place – and…

…it has taken longer than I expected to arrive at this point.

Here —> .

Why? Why is it that some start ups seem to happen in a matter of weeks, whilst other are carved out over months and years?

Brand building applications enable new businesses to go from concept to launch in a matter of hours (in theory.) Not so for us. Looking back over the development process that has been integral to the formation of Kawa Creative I recognise that we have been true to our use of the model. Kawa Creative has been developed according to the principles of the river metaphor; we have used the longitudinal aspect, the course of the river, to help us understand where we are in our process of development. We have used the lateral aspect, the cross section with boulders and driftwood, that we are so familiar with, to identify points of flow, barriers and opportunities. This has been a process of learning about our own development in order to apply our understanding of the river to the projects that we are now beginning to deliver.

I have previously reflected on the fact that the beginning of a river is not always a pretty, well defined spring in the ground, bubbling forth from the rocks and stating quite clearly “I am here.” Although this can be the case, and in the context of this piece this would represent those new businesses that are well defined and instant in the market place. usually these “rivers” are product or outcome orientated, and adhere to some kind of working formula. However, some rivers emerge from wet upland areas as nothing more than an area of boggy ground. Only when there is a change in the gradient of the landscape does the water begin to flow. In order for this to happen the water must accumulate.

Healing Messages was our pilot programme, our spring in the ground, we are now looking ahead to delivering our next project which will build on what we ave learned so far and enable us to start creating a portfolio of projects and activities that can be tailored to individual and collective needs. Through this development project we have identified three distinct areas that we will deliver on, these are the three central tenets of Kawa Creative:

These three principles carry with them all the work that we have carried out over the past two and half years, as well as the last six years I have spent exploring the river. We have distilled our thinking down to a very simple structure that can be adjusted and moulded to meet the needs of the participants.

Of course, as a new business, we have also been learning about the technical aspects of running a company, we have been learning about ourselves, about our relationships (both personal and professional), and we have been dealing with all the other things that life will throw your way. If you are thinking of setting up in private practice or in a role emerging area (such as Arts in Health) then I would say do not rush. Learn to time your decisions and trust your intuition, because these are your ideas and you are the expert on your own personal and professional development. Avoid the pressure that the business world sometimes applies to “make it happen,” because our prime concern is not profit: our prime concern is getting it right for our partners and beneficiaries. When we are productive, professional and effective then the renumeration will occur. This philosophy will not bring instant results, but it will create a firm bed of knowledge, ideas and a focussed commitment to the projects that you undertake.

This river is beginning to flow more steadily now, we have accumulated a volume of water and the change in the landscape has enabled us to find a direction, now we must run with this early progress, and allow the river to establish itself as it flows towards new projects, towards an emergence back into the profession of Occupational Therapy and towards the WFOT 2014 Congress in Yokohama.

I have often stated that to truly understand the Kawa framework, one must become an explorer and see what is in there (and out there.) I had thought that the last six years had been an exploration of the Kawa environment, but I was wrong: all I have been doing up until now is looking at maps.

Now that I make this particular reflection I understand that we have been preparing. We have been poring over the charts, packing our equipment and planning our start. Now it is time to put on my explorer’s hat and coat and start the real adventure, because what we have achieved, and the reason it has taken “So Long,” is that the Metaphor has been transforming into a reality.

This, then, is my hypothesis:

The Kawa Model presents us with the opportunity to create a map, upon which we can plan our journey. The river provides us with a language which transcends cultural boundaries and enables knowledge exchange accross a variety of borders. The river allows us to make choices and decisions without the fear of failure, becuase within the poetical language of the river, within its perfect harmony of dynamic relationship, there can be no such thing as failure; only change and flow. Finally, the river enables us to transform these ideas  into new realities which emerge as opportunities in our physical lives.

Just don’t try and rush it.

Related articles

• The Kawa (river) model of occupational therapy
• Role Emerging = Risk Engaging (2)
• Wfot 2014

Role Emerging 4OT

The 4OT suite of facebook pages, along with the Kawa Model page, have been a life line for me as I have been making my way back to practice. In part the route I have chosen has been a matter of survival, but I think that underlying that has been a certain aspect of my character which always has to do things differently.

Part of my learning has been understanding when my “inner rebel” is a help, and when it is just getting in the way of good practice. Another aspect to my learning “journey” has been to establish methods of feedback and support. This is where the 4OT suite comes in.

My interest in Role Emerging practice stems from my RE Placement back in 2009. I had deferred a placement due to some changes in my personal life and because of this I went out solo. Most of the other RE placements were done in pairs, but (and I should feel flattered by this) it was deemed that I could handle a solo placement. I was working at a YMCA training centre with young people who had been excluded from school for any number of reasons. We applied the OT process and gathered information and data on the setting and the young people. I sat in on classes and delivered one or two sessions myself. I quickly began to develop the hypothesis that there were two strands to addressing the issues in the centre. One was the boredom and lack of motivation experienced by the students and the other was the frustration and subsequent loss of motivation experienced by the staff.

For the students I developed a strategy which I called CIEN. This stood for Communication, Identity, Environment and Narrative. Allow me to give an example of one of the practicals. For the communication element, I bought all the components for two morse code transmitters. I then assembled one of them and did a meticulous activity analysis of this task so that I could provide exact instructions as to how the machine should be assembled. I then split the instructions in half, seperating all the odd and even instruction numbers into seperate sheets. In the session, I split the room in two and put a screen up down the middle. Each team was given a walkie talkie and told that they had to communicate with each other to build the machines.

This was a challenge that they all took to. Once the machine was complete they were given brib sheets and were able to send morse code messages to each other and decode them. The messages were mostly of a sexual nature these being teenagers. However, the important thing is that the content was theirs – they owned it, and they had learned a system of communication whilst being immersed in various communicative processes at the same time.

The idea began to crystalise that we needed to give the staff greater creativity in session planning, and give the students greater control over content.

One of the problems with RE is that one does not get the chance to fully develop and appraise these hypothesis. However, we did take the CIEN process through the next two stages. One of the staff proposed that the students put on a scratch fashion show. This was consistent with the my theory that we needed to give more creativity to the staff and more control over content to the students. The next stage in the CIEN process was Identity, and we needed to establish who were the models, who were the technicians, who were the designers and so on. The environmental aspect came in actually changing the space with staging, lighting, food and drink.

The handbook that I wrote for the CIEN process still sits on my hard drive awaiting development. Jessica Kingsley showed an interest but said that it needed a good deal more work. It is one of those things that I have not had the time or opportunity to develop. Perhaps we will be able to incorporate it into the business now that we are set up.

My role emerging placement has probably influenced more than anything else the direction that I have taken. Today I am going to look at the work that we created on our pilot project (Healing Messages), as well as meet some other OTs at a journal club. I will also be setting up my return to practice hours and all being well I will be back in the fold by the end of October.

I remember one of my lecturers telling me that I needed to get out of my comfort zone to be an effective therapist, and it now seems that being out of my comfort zone is my comfort zone. Role emerging is not for everyone, it is a personality thing. You use the same procesess, the same skills, the same methodologies. It may be that you osmose a few new ones as well, but we are all still working in the same profession – the main difference, to me, is lifestyle, and as OTs we really should understand that one.

 

Thanks to Gillian Gorry for posing the question in the first place.

Yokohama 2014 – The Adventure Begins

It has been some time since I wrote a blog for Kawa Creative, and it is with some excitement that I put this one together. First of all allow me to explain the lack of activity.

The last blog “Anxiety,” was published in June, just before the summer holidays. So there’s a clue. It has been a fantastic summer of festivals, road trips and fun times, but now it is back to work. Kawa Creative will be registered as a Not For Profit Company Limited by guarantee. We are very fortunate to have an excellent board of directors with some diverse skills and experience – more about that once we are up and running. We also have some exciting new projects in the pipeline as well as details of our pilot project which took place in March. But right now the one thing that is demanding all of my attention is the World Federation of Occupational Therapists 2014 Congress.

Many of the Kawa development team have submitted abstracts to the congress, and I am delighted to say that two have been accepted by Kawa Creative, and I will also be taking part in the pre-congress workshop along with Kee-Hean Lim, Jouyin Teoh  and of course Professor Michael Iwama. I will be presenting on two subjects: the use of mobile technologies and the Kawa Framework as a data collection tool, and also the Kawa Poetics – the language of rivers. More of that later. What I am concerned with here is how did I get here?

Kawa Creative is not something that has been dreamt up over night, it has emerged from the quagmire and ill-defined waters that have sprung from the bedrock of continuous reflections on the application of the river metaphor. At Bradford University I was introduced to the model and was lucky enough to meet Professor Iwama, and gain a deeper understanding into the roots of this remarkable system for practice. I made regular contributions on the Kawa Model forum, which now seems like a life time ago, and in 2010, when Jouyin Teoh set up the Kawa Facebook page, we saw the development go from strength to strength. Since then the Kawa Model has become a point of exploration and conversation all around the world – from Scandinavia to South America, Australia to Scotland.

It was my regular posts on Facebook that created the momentum for the Kawa Creative blog and it was a chance meeting with Sue Walpole that gave rise to Kawa Created Ltd and our own particular approach to arts for health. There is also the Kawa Wiki page, and the river appears to be popping up all over the virtual and physical domains – therefore: “…the river is everywhere.” (Hesse).

I never knew where this journey would take us all, least of all where it would take myself. Exploring the Kawa world has always been just that: an exploration. There have never been any expectations or projections, we have resisted the temptation to formalise our research, preferring to keep to the phenomenological roots of this wonderful gift “from practitioners to practitioners.” This river for me has flowed through significant life events of the last seven years, and it has, at times, been a place of solace and gentle reflection. I have come to regard rivers as more than just geographical features that happen to run through our towns and cities (especially as it is our towns and cities which cluster around the rivers.) I now see rivers as the great story tellers, etching their life-flow into the very rock and earth. They are forces of nature which leave behind complex and inspiring narratives of destruction, creation, birth and death, and never ending change.

When the river eventually reaches the sea, it flows into a place with no centre; a mass of water which obeys a different set of physical forces; and the stories that have been told are washed away by the ocean to be reabsorbed and told again and again across the ages. There is a poetry to the way that flowing water interacts with its environment and it is this poetry that we should seek to facilitate in the lives of those for whom we provide a service – and indeed in our own lives.

It has been through following the poetry of the Kawa Model, seeking opportunities to interact with other professionals and explore this tool that I have come to this place. As I return to practice and raise my sights on new challenges, I find myself flowing into the ocean, where my story will be washed amongst the currents and waves of a much larger reality, reformed and retold.

As I look forward to June 2014 in Yokohama I am filled with excitement and exhilaration as I consider the adventure that we are going to have; and that is what it has all been – an adventure. For me that is the message central to the Kawa approach: your life is not written, nor is it a linear event: it ebbs and flows across time and space, and if you wish, you can be an explorer in that river, and I suppose that is how I got here – it has been an adventure, I am an explorer.

Now to work.

Vive la Difference

I love the way our world of digital media works sometimes. After reading a post by Susan Burwash on Facebook I followed a link to the OT-Si Project on Twitter and eventually ended up on a blog site and a very short post about the nature of rehabilitation. So now here we are, minutes later, ready to publish from my own platform.

First of all, lets revisit the quote that started this line of thought off…

The goal of the recovery process is not to become normal. The goal is to embrace our human vocation of becoming more deeply, more fully human. The goal is not normalization. The goal is to become the unique, awesome, never to be repeated human being that we are called to be.

Pat Deegan 1996 – a person who has recovered from mental illness.

What is mental illness – what is mental wellness for that matter. One thing that I know that it is not is an outcome. Mental well being can never be seen as an end result, never is it a destination – it is the journey.  However, in such a product orientated world where process is just a means to an end, how can this notion be properly supported? 

Arts for Health, the Kawa Framework and other humanistic approaches are beginning to address this problem with in the Western cultural context, but this is not an easy climb. Making this shift requires a cultural change: a gradual erosion of the old order to reveal a new path which may not adhere to previous tenets.

In the passage above the phrase that moves me the most is “…to embrace our human vocation of becoming more deeply, more fully human.” This is a phrase which acknowledges our incompleteness, our potential for evolution. Mental “illness” is not a problem for society, it is an opportunity to learn from those who have experienced a world beyond many people’s comprehension and experience – it is an opportunity to see potential in the darkest places, and to question the assumptions and frameworks created by a world which seeks to restrict emotional existence. Mental – lets call it disruption – mental disruption is a journey, or at least part of a journey, it is not something to be impeded or disregarded as a dysfunction. I do accept that people in distress require support, but we should never assume mastery of the experience of others, less we should pollute the unique and powerful journey that they are on.

How we perceive and manage mental wellbeing is an opportunity for revolution.

Art Therapy Without Borders

I enjoy following ATWB posts on Facebook. The colourful and energetic images that appear in my timeline on a regular basis are a welcome reminder that amidst all the policy, research, evidence, standards, ethics, interventions, models, tools (standard and non standard), assessments and evaluations is the need to play. Within us all there is a force which begins at birth, and in the often cruel world of the adult human, this force can become distorted and mishapen, but it is our role as creative practitioners to release the constraints on this vibrant spirit, to remove the barriers to imagination, which are so often held in place by trauma, pain and isolation.

What are we but stories? We are an ever developing web of narratives which cross and merge, diverge and multiply. All of these stories are connected to a collective imagination which is the human condition. Science, Theatre, Visual Arts and so on, are all manifestations of the interaction between our senses, minds and environs.

In the river, the constant flow and interaction between water, channel and rocks and boulders, conceptualises this narrative process. We are the shared experience of all, expressed through a variety of collective and individual media. My former theatre lecturer and director of my first stageplay, once remarked that “theatre is a human need.” Art Therapy Without Borders understand this fully.

Creativity should never be considered an ‘add on’ or a luxury. Creativity is fundamental to human survival. When ancient man donned an animal skin and “became” the essence of that animal in order to hunt, he engaged in a form of theatre which we now call mask work. It may seem a tenuous link, but the fact of the matter is that creativity has been a part of human evolution since we came out of the swamps. In Papua New Guinea, there is a tradition of re-enacting ancient tribal wars in the form of dance, as the two tribes – once enemies – now engage in celebrations and festivals. In western society, we see disaffected areas transformed by well directed urban arts projects. The creative process is transformative by its very nature.

The origins of the arts are embedded deep within our evolution, and extend far beyond the boundaries of state funding, corporate value or social status. The rise of the Arts for Health movement is a call to all practitioners to embrace the power of the creative process as guiding principle for rehabilitation and recovery.  

So thankyou to ATWB for reminding us all that the most fundamental element to healthy development (social, emotional and physical), healthy living and happiness is to be creative, engage in new experiences, and above all, to be the child and play.

From the backwaters to the mainstream

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When your river has run in the backwaters for any length of time it is always going to be a new and daunting experience to flow into the mainstream. When you are shaped by the backwaters that footprint will always stay with you; your river will always carry the memory of the hill streams and places of calm. At times you will crave the sanctity of the rocky beds and shallow banks.

English: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Resized, renamed, and cropped version of File:Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs.svg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was interested to listen to a programme on Radio 4 today about Abraham Maslow, and his humanist approach to psychology. At the time he was a pioneer because he looked for those things which made people “better” human beings. Rather than attempting to deconstruct the human mind he strove to build a vision of how we can achieve all that we are capable of. Maslow was not a strict clinician, much of his work lacked empirical data, and he did not always see eye to eye with his researchers. However, he did take an approach which promoted the notion of meaning, activity and “paved the way for the well-being agenda,” which should make him required reading for all occupational therapists, especially when considered as a forerunner to Mihalyi Czikszenmihalyi (see below)

There has been a few pieces of traffic coming my way recently on the importance of empirical data, evidence based practice and the pitfalls of “doing it your way” simply because it seems right. However, perhaps there is room for both. Perhaps we need both empiricism and intuition to provide a well rounded approach to social health and well-being. I see no reason why the thinkers, poets, visionaries, boat rockers and apple cart upsetters should not have a role to play in the development of a profession. Of course, this cannot become the norm otherwise we would never get anywhere amid the chaos of a million egos all vying for an editorial of their own. But we should recognise that we need these spirits in any profession to question the status quo, to extend our thinking and (most importantly of all) to remind us that we are human.

As we flow from the backwaters to the mainstream we should celebrate the likes of Maslow and all those self actualisers who have kept their river flowing through deep waters and into the open sea. We should remember that, although we must strive to deliver excellence through evidence, we must also strive to deliver empathy, open mindedness and compassion. 

Related articles

• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs 😀
• Thoughts on Maslow, from a student of Adler
• Happy Birthday, Abraham Maslow: How Humanistic Psychology Shaped the Modern Self

Narrative Inquiry – a response

This short piece started out as a reply to Kirsty Stanley’s blog on Narrative Inquiry.

English: Screenshot from Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The river tells a story and the Kawa approach is very much about narrative and lived experience. It is only through narrative that we can attain a true understanding of the experience of others. We are nothing but stories – our history, our identity, our learning, our government, culture, beliefs, upbringing, environments are all stories. Our interactions with one another generate further stories which ebb and flow around the landscape of our perceptions.

 

“Science without art is a tea bag without water” is very true. And the reverse is also true, after all, in a creative role I use technologies and applications which have come from scientific endeavour. Science gives us the resources to explore our creativity to greater and greater levels. What art gives science is the opportunity to integrate itself more fully with humanity.

 

I think one of the biggest problems we face is the way that both science and art are represented by the media. Science is often seen as some kind of eggheaded netherworld where the man in the street is not welcome; and art can be portrayed as either wacky and off the wall or or entirely elite and inaccessible. What is worse, our conflict obsessed media, will always pitch one against the other, and when these two disciplines do converge it is seen as ground-breaking – even though the likes of Da Vinci, Aristotle had been combining both the scientific and creative arts in their thinking long before our profession was even conceived of.

 

Occupational Therapists are (or should be in my eyes) curators and analysts of the stories which we are presented with. We make sense of the narratives we encounter through the application of the processes we are trained in and the experience we accumulate. More than this, we need to be pattern recognisers and meta-theorists who see the connections between multiple systems and can understand the cultural relevance in a situation no matter what the lived experience of the individual or group.

 

If you are in any doubt regarding the importance of narrative, then think about a time when you have been asked to tell your story – how did it feel? How often do we get the opportunity to tell our story, or even a part of it? Taking a narrative approach demands that we listen, which promotes concentration and compassion, from this emerges understanding and relevance. Only through truly engaging with the lived experience of the client can we fully apply our professional skills, values and core beliefs.

 

What are we but stories?

 

Related articles

• N is for… Narrative Inquiry (Book) #AtoZChallenge

N is for… Narrative Inquiry (Book) #AtoZChallenge

See on Scoop.it – Creativity, Health & Meaning

N is for… Narrative Inquiry (Book) Haven’t had time to read this book, or even scan through it really so I’m just going to add a picture of the cover. I know this is one I’ll be reading. Instead …

See on kirstyes.co.uk

The 5 Most Dangerous Creativity Killers

See on Scoop.it – Creativity, Health & Meaning

The what the hell! effect and other ways we can short circuit our creativity.

Kawa Creative‘s insight:

Behance do offer some great insights on creativity. Here is one…

See on 99u.com

Fear to Succeed

Failure is the key to success. Not such a radical statement in a post modern world, but how many of us are truly committed to dispensing with the notion of failure? The trouble is that if you are going to accept that failure is a construct, then you are also going to have to accept that success is too.

It’s not unlike the phrase “great minds think alike.” How often to we attach the second part of this well used aphorism: “…and fools seldom differ.” We are committed to the eradication of excessive poverty, but excessive wealth is held up as paradigm for moral virtue.

The point is that we cannot just select the ying and dispose of the yang. Kawa shows us the dynamic interdependence between life flow and environment, on the river there is no success or failure, there is only the constant interplay between the river walls and floor and the motion of the water. In place the banks are eroded and the material is carried down stream where it is deposited to reform the local topography. On the river desire and fear have no meaning because the optimum state of being is one of harmony and balance.

Fear, success, failure and desire are all values which prevent us from achieving balance and flow, and happiness.