Turtorial Two - Occupational Engagement, Doing, Being, Becoming & Belonging.

WEAVING MATS.

Weaving is a craft carried out in many cultures for different uses and meanings. It can be done as a part as a craft group or on you own. I chose this as a way of occupational engagement as it is a way to feel as though there is a belonging to a group. I first saw weaving in my most recent placement, Craft and Care (Fieldwork 2) I witnessed the weaving of mats used for things as place mats and shower mats. Craft and Care, like weaving, is where the elderly come together and engage in an occupation that has meaning. There's a sense of belonging and feeling as though they're occupying their time by doing something useful rather than not contributing.

Doing ‘includes purposeful, goal orientated activities’ (Hammell, 2004).

Hamell (2004) states "Being" as the ‘time taken to reflect, be introspective or meditative, (re)discover the self, savour the moment, appreciate nature, art or music in a complimentive manner and to enjoy being with special people.'

Becoming ‘Describes the idea that people can envision future selves and possible lives, explore new opportunities about who they wish to become over the course of their biographies and how their lives might be experienced as worthwhile, (Hammell, 2004) and lastly, Belong is a ‘social interaction, mutual support and friendship, and the sense of being included’. (Hammell, 2004)

Weaving Mats.

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Brief descriptions of each image is in the slideshow.

Ethical Considerations

I took my own photos during my fieldwork experience and due to ethical considerations of others I made sure to verbally receive consent from each individual in the photographs and made sure they knew I would be using them for learning purposes.

I then made the ethical consideration that if these participants were uncomfortable I would make sure not to take any photos of them and the ones who were OK with it had photos taken that were highly appropriate and non discriminative.

Another consideration of ethics I made were around the pictures taken off the Internet.  I made sure these were authentic and from an appropriate site (weaving instruction web page etc) and not from a social web page where it would not be OK to copyright the pictures.



References

Hammell, K.W. (2004). Dimensions of meaning in the occupations of daily life. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 71 (5).