This week’s musings with Lucy Bennett show how platforms such as YouTube allow the opportunity to be constantly learning
Learning from YouTube
It’s pretty hard for me to get to professional class these days. Gone are the days when I would get up at a crazy hour, pay a crazy fare to London and participate in the glorious ritual of professional class at The Place or GDA. I do miss those days terribly, but at the same time my style of learning has changed, just as my lifestyle has changed.
This morning I got up at 5am, well my son got me up at 5am and after our morning ritual of Tee and Mo (CBeebies) followed by Gene Kelly and Singing in the Rain, I participated in an online class of Yoga with Adrienne.
Whenever I have gone through a life change although I fight it, I always end up learning invaluable stuff – stuff that inevitably contributes to my life and work (same thing, yeah?). For instance participating in numerous baby sensory workshops this year. The look of horror on my son’s face as bubbles, snowballs, glitter, noises and big fluffy bunnies are thrown his way has made me re look and re invent our Stopgap sensory workshops for SEN schools. Learning online instead of in the studio has given me time to think about Stopgap’s online classes.
For a while now we have been dabbling with the learning online community too. Replay is our online dance channel. It’s very home made (comical in places if you know what to look for), but the reason we did it was for access. There is a great provision in the UK for once a week dance classes for disabled young people, but very few classes that push diverse talent and very few role models. Our dancers are great artists but they are also passionate about practicing their skill and dare I say it virtuosity! They need to be visible talent, tricks and all!
Replay really helps us support those dancers who in the past have had to rely on ‘Steps’ videos to learn their moves. Now they can still practice in their living room but with role models who can give alternatives as well as inspiration.
I love my morning yoga session with Adrienne – it really works, you have time to explore, time to pause, it feels private yet you are part of a community and most importantly it’s accessible, because it fits into my lifestyle. After learning on line for a year, I can see Replay needs some serious input in order for it to be really useful to people, something that we hope to be looking into very soon. The dancers are already pushing round ideas in the studio – online fitness, yoga, Franklin (inclusive of course), sharing of methods, tricks and a live stream of class.
If you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see from Stopgap with regards to our online dance classes, get in contact (admin@stopgapdance.com) – we want to build that community. And here is the link to Replay itself.