Tutor feedback for my midpoint review took the form of a video chat.

We had general discussion on some ideas I have had on my practical works.  I made some suggestions on how works might be displayed but tutor feedback was that I shouldn’t be concerned with audience participation and feedback at this stage of unit. My work needs a more definitive experimentation path where I explore different ideas, record my thoughts and as required revisit these ideas and repeat the cycle.

One interesting thought was the idea of not forcing my thoughts into the space reserved for someone else’s loss. It is ok for me to explore my own loss but I should steer clear of the sense of vulgarity or lightheartedness when dealing with others.

We spoke about the concept of good death and bad death where a bad death is one which is badly managed and uncontrolled. Of the changes in western society perhaps with advent of NHS and perhaps earlier at start of industrial revolution when families started to move to towns and cities from their rural homes and where births and deaths started to move out of the home. Death in particular started to be managed by professionals whereas before the family would have washed and dressed the body. In the context of good deaths and bad deaths, a child’s death is not appropriate or normal. It can therefore be seen as a bad death. I wonder here about the past when infant mortality much greater than it is today and how the ‘normality’ of the death of a child was seen. Is the death of a child such a fundamental thing that it doesn’t matter if this was a more common thing in the past?

It feels that now the first half of course done, the next half will involve more. More in depth study, more reflection, more practical work and review and reinterpreting that work.

One suggested piece of reading material from the month’s meeting;

Allan Kellehear, A Social History of Dying, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

More detailed actions involve summarising progress in unit so far in relation to learning outcomes and practicing the literature review and why the ideas contained in my chosen sources are important to me.