Debbie Marper-Gibson

Beginnings Response to Adesola Akinlaye’s blog 28/01/2019    Reading Adesola’s blog on beginning’s made me reflect on the beginning of my teaching career in 1980. It was at a school that was a private school during the day and a dance school in the evenings and at weekends. Effectively it was managed almost like a performing arts school or stage school. There was my interview with a strong and quite intermediating principal! That was the official beginning. The energetic beginning was the first class that I taught. A group of wonderful children all eager to soak up the knowledge of Greek dance. The first show I was involved in as a teacher there was in the first term of my starting. The show was basically a showcase of the performing arts subjects taught in the school. Ie children playing musical instruments, reading poetry, singing and of course dance. It was performed in a professional theatre and started at 7.00pm and finished 10.45pm! There were no links to...

1st Cumbria Arts in Health Conversation  On Thursday 17th January I attended the above event. Keynote speakers were - Clive Parkinson, who is the Director of Arts for Health and the nascent Manchester Institute for Arts, Health and Social Change. Hayley Youell, who is events co-ordinator for the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance and Jo Ward, whose work includes working on an NHSE social subscribing remit. There were other speakers who brought a wide range of skills in the Arts to what proved to be an amazing day of professional practice and exchanges of ideas. There were also workshops spread out throughout the day. Coming from a dance/drama background one of the workshops that interested me in particular was called, Interdisciplinary ways of working. This was a workshop lead by Susie Tate, Director of Healing Arts and Sandie Fisher, Principal lecturer of Performing Arts at the University of Cumbria. This was a taster of the work being done by a Healing Arts project called Ab...