Reflections

Just reflecting on my last post. Amongst the most important skills in community work is communication. If communication is not happening it can be the sign of a closed group. This can bring with it, on one hand, a strong sense of belonging but it can also mean that the group has become insular. The offshoot of this is often a distrust of anything new and a situation where new participants are shunned. It's a pretty negative place to be.

It's interesting to me that my difficulties in finding a particular community centre was seen a positive, in that the building didn't present itself as what one expects a community centre to look like. I had seen it as a negative in that anyone who was anxious about presenting themselves for the first time at the centre, would have this added difficulty.

In fact, it has interested me greatly recently that I am continuously asking what the important aspect of our learning is e.g. the Streets of Wexford project - is the most important aspect of this the completion of the task or is it the groups responsibility to each other to complete the task? Is the important aspect of our community work learning to set up and use a blog or positive interaction with people?

The unruly body needs looking after - I'll be back

Pendulous Points

At last I found out who Santo is! Guess that means I can start this blog.
When I heard about the community placement my heart stopped, as I recalled what burnout felt like. I baulked at the thoughts of doing a community placement. Like a pendulum I moved from refusing to do it to attempting to do it, from considering the benefit of the experience for students and placement participants to questioning whether there were any positive benefits in dispatching an army of reluctant 'helpers' into the community. I managed to put it all into perspective however on being reminded that the placement itself is worth 5% of marks and the writing could be awarded with an astounding 75%. The excitement of it all.

Now, having turned into a driven women I set about finding a placement. First I researched different artists to see if I could find something interesting and came across one Robert Sherlock, a wheelchair bound artist whose work was shown in IMMA. He has written some papers on the level at which paintings are hung in gallaries and how this discriminates against people below a certain height e.g those in wheelchairs. This saw me visit ........., which is a community centre for wheelchair bound people. They requested my CV which was passed to them. I found out that many of the paid staff are from my own village....The Kil....Mafia. I began to worry about personal information doing the rounds in the village and if anyone believes that this wouldn't happen, I would say, get a grip on reality. Anyway I never heard from them again and having gone off the idea, didn't chase it up. I also went down to the.........but could'nt find it. That's the storey about the placement.

I'm now thinking of hanging a typical community experience onto a group of six women I met when I participated in an art fling thing in the village. It is my intention to use this as a means of talking about my favourite educator Paulo Friere along with his theory and practice. I used the Frierian method in my work throughout my life. Love the man, met the man in Edinburgh in the 1980's before some of you were born. Thats all for now folks. I'm off to bed. Cheers

Mystery

Who the hell is santo1308. I am not putting anything on this blog until santo identifies themselves. Ethna

Ethnascommunity

Hi there