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Professional Practice

Reflective Writing

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Reflective Writing - Harry Isaacs

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Personal Experience

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Our professional operation was to act as a co-ordinated events company, hosting and organising a set of four events with an ambitious expectation to meet the industry standard as practitioners. To make this happen effectively, it was down to us to form different sets of groups that would take responsibility for different aspects of the events being held. The University of East London would hold these events in collaboration with the ‘social convention’ team, a small team operating a bar in Canning Town made in mind for openly queer people, where all our events took place.

We decided to split into three groups, each one covering an umbrella of roles and responsibilities to be handed out within each. They were to be set out as follows:

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  • Production Team

  • Artist Management

  • Marketing Team

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Within each team, we were given tasks to carry out in between each production meeting that occurred on a weekly basis, creating many individual objectives for each other to ensure that by the time we delivered our event that it would meet the aims of our expectations.

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My obligations were part of the marketing team, which involved graphic design for posters and other promotional content to be put in the public domain. Whilst I originally felt more inclined to be in the production team, it felt more than worthwhile to gain some experience in an area I was unfamiliar with.

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Whilst graphic designer was the role that took my priority, I also picked up other responsibilities along the way. For our second event which took place with an electronic dance theme in mind, it was incentivised for me to take the role of a liaison between the performing acts and the marketing team. Many of the performers for that event were students in my class, and with a greater ease of accessibility within these two groups, it seemed necessary to expand my task load to better accommodate for my peers in the marketing team.

 

During this time, I have learned numerous skills, including communication skills that help keep team members up to date with developments, as well as an ability to apply constructive analysis and criticism. I have also gained experience that gives me a better understanding of the process of professional graphic design, and how visuals make an essential tool for creating promotional value.

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1.) Evidence and Feedback

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The feedback from our online survey’s regarding the audiences’ experiences of our events, strongly suggest that we have carried out our events organisation in an effective and well thought out manner.

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100% of participants gave a positive response when they were asked about their enjoyment of the 1st event, giving on average an 8.5 out of 10 when asked to rate their overall experience on a scale, with 92% stating that they could see themselves coming to another event hosted by us.

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With that being said, the survey goes on to ask about the sound quality of the event, and this contains criticism regarding the gain staging of the microphone between each performer, highlighting that some performances were not delivered to the same quality simply because the technical adjustments were not made between each set.

When the audience were asked where improvements could be made for the events to come after, remarks were made about not just the technical shortcomings that were endured, but also the variety of acts that were performing on the day were perceived as narrow, in terms of both their style and sense of originality.

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Unfortunately, due to the untimely presence of a flu, I was unable to attend the 1st event and experience the environment on that night, so I have no way to draw the findings of that first event to my own experience and perspective. Thankfully however, I was able to be present for the second events night we hosted, where due to technical errors there wasn’t a survey in place to record audience feedback.

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During my experience of the second event that took place, I was fortunate enough to gain a great understanding of the feedback provided by the audience of the first event that took place. The set up within the location itself, was intimate, comfortable, and overall provided a very warm and friendly atmosphere that would be accommodating for most people. The sound quality was more than adequate for the event to proceed, and there were no signs of hostile reception. The performance spaces were set up without hassle as well as neatly organised, and the quality of planning going into the event was reflected in the feedback meeting we had the following week.

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2.) Discussions - What is reflective practice and what are the key types of reflection.

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Reflective practice is a constantly conscious effort to be mindful of your actions and the cognitive reasoning behind them before, during and after an objective has been carried out, illustrating a sustained regard for how one was to operate to hold themselves accountable and review so that they could look for improvements to be made for future endeavor's.

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The Critically Reflective Practitioner (.) was the main documentation that I used to dictate my reflective process throughout the procedure of my events. Not only does it illustrate the various levels of effective reflective practice and the differences between them, but also identifies and critically analyses the stages of reflection occurring throughout the various stages of our practice in relation to time.

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Within a professional context, reflective practice is used to review and deliver a service at a more effective level and can offer critical insight into how your operations as a practitioner can be refined to a standard that prioritises success as a business, which would help a given brand/organisation reach a higher level of delivery that is associated with professionalism.

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In terms of reflective practice within a personal context, this type of analysis becomes more specifically about how a said individual contributes towards their own development as a practitioner and encourages critical introspective thinking about their own habits and routines that can be changed as individuals to reach a higher level of performance within a professional context.

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So, what are key elements of useful reflective writing/discussions?

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There are many diverse types of reflection that vary depending on to what extent these analogies are acted upon, and what impact is made because of the ability to critically analyse and act upon those findings.

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Immanent (Thompson, 2018) reflections are a type of reflection where there is no change made whatsoever regarding how one has carried out their objective. These are self-contained analogies that are observed with reservations about the need for adjusting how one would usually operate, which in a sense can be reduced to the action of simply thinking and only thinking, with complete inaction beyond that. Ideally, all our Immanent reflections would be positive aspects of our events that we would have no intention of changing, rather than negative aspects of our events that could be a detriment going forward should the issues surrounding them were not addressed.

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I personally recall a very good example of this occurring during the performances of our second event. Since the electronic music night was split into two sections as part of the event plan, the audience had to migrate from the upstairs room down to the main bar to continue watching the performances that were planned for that night. This migration however, failed to keep much of the audience engaged with the performance once the upstairs event was over, and there weren’t any actions taken to address the absence of the audience, even though the likes of me and a few other of the event organisers were fully conscious of this transpiring.

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Transitive (Thompson, 2018) reflection is the opposite of Immanent reflections - This is where a reflection brings about a reaction, resulting in a short-term solution transpiring because a critical analogy was made and acted upon. A change in behaviour that came about due to actively pursuing a reflective practice, is likely to be one that addresses negative shortcomings that transpired from the way we proceeded with our operation.

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A transitive reflection I can recall was during the first event, an issue which is brought up within our first feedback survey as well as throughout this documentation. Because of issues regarding the loudness of our performers, the mediator for our event had to keep making micro-adjustments to the microphone in order to compensate for the inconsistency between each performers level of loudness throughout the night.

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Finally, transformational (Thompson, 2018) reflection goes beyond the boundaries of transitive reflection. Transformational reflection occurs when there is a real-world permanent consequence that transpires because of the changes that were made due to action being taken on the analysis that was made. In a business practice, a transitive reflection will be one that provides a solution to a given problem/issue that is being encountered when they carry out their operation in the immediate present and the foreseeable future. If the issue that was to be addressed never arises again after the change has been carried out, and the business continues to implement the adjustment that was the remedy to the issue, then that would make the reflection which was previously ‘transitive’ become ‘transformational’, ultimately becoming an issue that no longer needs addressing in a long-term sense because it already has a permanent solution.

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In terms of my marketing decisions as the graphic designer for a few of our posters, there are several occurrence's where I had to mentally note my decisions towards the poster’s creation and its surrounding themes, which were then reviewed by our peers for transformational changes to be made. Once we executed our plan for the first poster and had a document to present to the events team, we had a meeting where the draft was presented to all the organisers involved to be disseminated with critical feedback. Once suggestions for alterations were made, we made these changes to the poster accordingly, and we applied these comments in our attempts to make posters for the events that followed, resulting in a permanent change to our process in graphic design as we proceeded with the other projects.

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The stages of reflection on our events

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Thompson and Thompson (2018) identify the 3 stages of reflective practice before, during and after the practitioners' operations have been carried out. These stages can be used to critically analyse the effectiveness of our collective efforts within our planning process They are as follows:

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  • Reflection-prior-to-actions (Thompson, 2018)  - This occurs before the beginning of the practice being carried out, and this is used to describe the prophetic conclusions that are drawn when planning out how practitioners are going to carry out their operations and the conscious adjustments they make before proceeding with their objective. In other words, this type of reflection is carried out during the preparation stage of the professional endeavour.

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A good example of using reflection-prior- to-action, comes from my initial attempts to design the poster for our first event. Planning the contents of a poster is a prime example of planning-prior-to-action, with not only decisions to be made regarding crucial details that should be featured on the poster, but also the appropriate colour-schemes to be used for the visual design itself, as well as what target audiences the content is being developed for. These are all considerations that should be made during the preparation of a poster-production.

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  • Reflection-during-action (Thompson, 2018)  - This refers to real-time decisions made during the event that had to be made in real time, which were not accounted for during the preparation stage. Reflection-in-action may be likely to occur when an unforeseeable problem occurs, and an immediate decision must be made to troubleshoot the issue so that the event can proceed.

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The documentations on the first event contain examples of reflection-during-action, as urgent adjustments which were not premeditated were needed to be done in real time due to technical difficulties. These interventions were made due to the gain staging of the microphone being incorrect between each performance, as the mediator for the event on that night found herself having to adjust the microphone by hand during performances to compensate for the loss of loudness which occasionally came to pass throughout the evening.

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  • Reflection-post-action (Thompson, 2018)  - This reflection is what most people are accustomed to - the act of looking back with hindsight on how the operation was carried out. It may be here where the reflection of the effectiveness of the planning and the practical process becomes more vivid. Whilst looking back is important to do to move forward, it is also imperative to ensure that the cognitive decisions that were made in real time are considered when looking back at the preparation process and beyond, so that we can critically disseminate how effective we were in our preparations.

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There were many production meetings we had where reflection post action took place. Since I was absent for the first event, the production team that worked to collate the survey gave me a reflective analysis of how the event transpired, including the positive audience feedback and the small technical issues that were encountered throughout the night. By giving me a breakdown of what went well and what could have gone better, the production team were actively performing post-action reflection, giving me a vivid idea of what was going to be kept the same and what was going to change as we moved forward with the preparation of other events. 

 

Overall, I would say that there was intention from all partakers of our committee to work together to deliver an effective professional practice. We made sure that we had ease of access in communicating with one another, by organising a plethora of group communications systems on the likes of Microsoft teams and WhatsApp to ensure that we were able to be keep constantly updated in our developments as we proceeded with the preparations for each evening.

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Whilst communicating within each team was not a challenging hurdle to take on, communications across each team was more difficult than we had anticipated. There were often where the marketing team especially struggled to stay informed on developments regarding who was performing, what type of promotion they wanted and so on. Whilst organising our roles within our team came with relative ease of understanding, communication across our organisation teams were not as common as I would have liked.

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Some of our production meetings weren’t solely focused on the events coming, and this meant that the organisation of them relied on students to take initiatives within their teams to hand out jobs during their own time. Unfortunately, many of the participants in our event’s organisers group did not feel incentivised to handout roles and responsibilities outside of these meetings, and this led to some rushed planning occurring the day before an occasion from certain teams. The lack of Individual engagement towards the meetings, often made it difficult and at times frustrating when people weren’t up to date on the latest developments and would need late updates on the progression of our events.

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In future, its will be important to ensure that all subjects who are participating in my professional practice are deeply committed to the endeavours at hand and will show up promptly to deliver a service at the time demanded by employees and customers alike. Furthermore, using communication tools to help these teams keep contact with one another as a collective hive mind, would be a more favourable method to use for keeping multiple teams updated should I need to do so in the future.

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Case Study

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As an active graphic designer amongst other responsibilities within our marketing team, it was also incentivised that I draw similarities of my role in terms of its context within the music industry, to see how my obligation in our practice compares to the current industry standard, as well as what the landscape of employment looks like for the role of marketing within the music industry.

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Jessica Munroe’s success at Pheonix Music International (Geddes, 2023) is a prime example about how marketing prowess can be a major entry tool for a job in the music industry. Being enrolled as an apprentice initially, the many education opportunities available at PMI covers a complete array of aspects within the music industry, from the basics of graphic design to the ins and outs of business management.

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Her path reflects how the increasingly saturated nature of social media marketing, is encouraging business-based practices to offer apprenticeships that help youth’s manifest highly in demand marketing roles at record labels that depend on public promotion to make revenue and succeed in the market. These apprenticeships in turn provide their students with assignments that encourage the creation of real-life business projects, along with the key features that come with understanding aspects of project management and business operations intertwine, along with upholding the responsibility that comes with partaking in these endeavours.

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With eight years gone since her work at PMI started, she has since become license and catalogue manager, as well as receiving opportunity to study for a master’s degree in music business. The rewards for Jessica’s engagement in a music marketing apprenticeship have been plentiful, allowing her to divert from an immediate entry into higher education to gain work experience which would be valuable in her eventual decision to pursue her BA followed by her master’s degree in music business.

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The ever-expanding digital domain provides many opportunities for marketing and business roles within a post pandemic landscape, as well as the independent labels that are continuing to emerge even after the crisis of COVID. With the more recent emergence of Tik-Tok and other media platforms that contribute to both the marketing and the streaming of music, giving businesses more incentivisation’s to expand their marketing strategy’s as these form of mediums continue to increase.

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As we further into a digital age, there will inevitably more marketing and business management opportunities, as the number of independent labels looking to sell their digital catalogue increases, along with the available media platforms there will be to do so. The only threat to the availability of these potentially lucrative opportunities, comes from the emerging prominence of artificial intelligence. As the technology rapidly continues to be innovating itself, it may seem that roles in marketing and business management may be endangered by machine learning, should computers overtake humans in their capacity for such processes.

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Bibliography

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