Films

A five mile hike, 8th January 2010

Nearly home

I have been reading and thinking about the two conversations between Andrew and Norman:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/01/conductive-education-on-tv-in-maritimes.html
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/01/education-education-education.html

If you haven’t seen them yet, first go and look at the dreadful film on “robot therapy”:

http://www.ric.org/aboutus/mediacenter/press/2009/0714.aspx

And see an article that goes with it:

http://www.usnews.com/health/managing-your-healthcare/heart/articles/2008/09/19/how-robots-are-aiding-stroke-rehabilitation.html

Now read on

I have been sitting and thinking about that dreadful film. Since I watched it I have been looking at other videos on the Internet, some awful, some nice. I also looked at Beth Brydon’s video-film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Dt4RQfu4k

I was thinking the same as Norman. The nice ones are just that nice. By nice I mean here that they show hands-off, well-organised conductive programmes, they are saying the right things and not the wrong things, clients are busy and smiling. But even the nice ones are still showing children bending legs, lifting sticks, hurling bean bags and sitting in a circle.

• Where are the films of someone doing the vacuuming?
• Where are the films of someone using the plinth to hold on to, or to crouch down and paint the lowest bit of a painting that is hanging on the easel-plinth?
• Where is the film of the wall bars being used to hang painting boards on, and at the same times to stand up on to reach the high bits, and help crouch down to reach the low bits, bend to reach a dropped paintbrush or sponge, then to stand again to paint some more?
• Where are the films of adults making coffee, baking biscuits, sewing?
• Where are the films of children building snowmen, sledging, lying on a bench in the woods in the heat of summer, rolling down a hill, marching through the lanes, tramping through deep snow, falling in its softness and making snow angels.
• Where are the films of people absentmindedly trailing a hand though snow on a wall or picking the petals off a dandelion?
• Where are those films of "just doing it"?

That is what is missing even from the nice films.

The nice films show Conductive Education as what it is in the centres where the films are being made so that it comes over as just another form of physiotherapy. Instead, it would be a good idea to get out there, filming the daily lives, making films to show how conductive lives are led. Or if you do keep on making the films in the groups, but transform the “one, two, three, four, five” into conductive living, right there in the centres.

If I have all the sorts of the activity that I listed on photographs, why can't centres get it on their films?