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Why do you do what you do? | Practice.ie Professional Learning Day: Kilkenny
2012-04-02

Why do you do what you do?

As we did in West Cork, artists were asked to get into pairs to do this activity.

During the activity, each person talks for 5 minutes about ’why they do what they do’ while the other person only listens and does not respond in any way. After 5 minutes, we switched over.

Afterwards, we asked the group for one thing they said or heard.
Here were some of the responses:

-A lot of reflection
-Positive
-Working towards a goal
-Working locally
-A journey
-New to Ireland
-Everyone equal
-Authentic
-Chance to be outraspective (not always looking inward)
-Achievement
-Encouragement
-Paper-making
-Social art
-Inspiration
-Hard work

Then we asked: how did it feel to do the exercise, either as the speaker or the listener. Here are some of the responses:

-Nervous
-Realisation that I don’t reflect enough
-Daft goose!
-Feels like cliches
-Five minutes felt like a long time
-Talking to myself/ Mirroring each other
-Made me think about what I was saying
-"speed art"
-Felt like I knew the other person very quickly - depth
-Different and similar
-Both able to speak and listen
-Wanted to know more
-Relaxed into it (as listener)

Finally, we asked if there were any insights or learning from the exercise:

-Thought it would come more naturally
-It was a suitable question to ask
-Surprised by the vagueness of what I said
-Honesty was needed to answer the question
-Have to value both who you are and what you do
-REquires you to identify what you really value
-Allows you to externalise all the things in your head
-Nice that other people in the room ’get it’. (As friends who are not artists often don’t!)