Facilitating In The Moment

Abstract

Facilitating In The Moment
Lucy Nicholson, Kerstin Wellhofer, Ruth Spencer & Sarah Hall: University of Central Lancashire, UK
'Teaching is learning. If you're not discovering something in the process, then something's missing.' (Olsen & McHose, 2014). At UCLanDance we have an ongoing fascination with the interplay between creative practice & facilitation, much of our research focusses on the engagement of all bodies within community settings through movement & dance. We believe there is value in the intersectionality between our community focussed practice and our higher education teaching.
This audio podcast captures the conversation between four lecturers from the UCLanDance team at The University of Central Lancashire, Preston, as they draw on their embodied and creative practice as socially engaged dance artists and somatic movement educators to discuss the role it plays within their higher education teaching. Responding to the question, how do you find your authentic self within your teaching practice? the collaborators will connect their collective specialisms in Improvisation, Performance, Community Dance Practice, Dance In Education, Youth Dance, Authentic Movement, Body Mind Centring and The Laban-Bartenieff Movement System (LBMS) to unpick critical incidents in their HE delivery and offer insight into the phenomenological experience of facilitation.

As we stand on the shoulders of the academics and practitioners that have come before us such as Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen, Andrea Olsen, Caryn McHose Miranda Tufnell, Karen Studd, Laura Cox, Yolande Snaith we aim to augment what may happen within seconds in the reality of a teaching experience to analyse how we attend to ourselves whilst in the relational field. 'Staying in flow between inner and outer connectivity in facilitation; the placing of our participants AND ourselves at the heart of our practice' (Nicholson, 2019)

Using the LBMS method of 'capturing the essence' this 10 minute podcast will share the most significant excerpts from this conversation and arrive at some concluding themes that will offer a stepping stone to further, deeper and more significant research into the moment of facilitation.
The conversation will use critical reflection as an underpinning framework and prioritise what is emergent in the merging of ideas, experiences, theorems & expertise in the moment of them meeting.