This is the second post in the Reflection and Readiness series. In this series I explore how reflective practice can help prepare us to navigate life’s challenges and opportunities.
I started my PhD at the beginning of 2020. It was to be an action research project designing, implementing, and studying an intercultural music engagement program in Naarm/Melbourne.
Shortly after I commenced, the World Health Organisation’s Director General declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. The PhD became about intercultural music engagement during lockdown. As physical distancing was imposed we reached out to each other, singing over balconies and collaborating with each other via digital bridges.
While it has always been the case, recent events have underlined the degree to which we are connected and interdependent. What happens in one part of the world has reverberations across the globe.
Our futures are intertwined.
What does this mean for our readiness to navigate life’s challenges and opportunities?
In the What Am I Building? workshop in March 2026, drawing on the work of Bronfenbrenner, we considered the systems we inhabited. Who were the people in our immediate circle? How were we situated in neighbourhoods? What were the impacts of institutions in our lives – media, local council, state and national government? How were we influenced by cultural and social norms?
Using art materials to create a work in response to these prompts we considered our surroundings and resources in terms of affordances and constraints, drawing on the work of Gibson.
A broader perspective can allow us to see what skills, knowledge, and resources we can recruit to new and different aims. It can also allow us to realistically consider how to strategically and considerately allocate our time, smarts and energy – as these, along with our own and the earth’s resources, are not infinite.
Sometimes we also need to reflect on our feelings, experience, and skills in relation to others. What do we know about ourselves? What do others know about us that we cannot see?
The Johari Window, developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham is a tool to help explore some of these questions, dividing our personal information into four quadrants:
Open area – information known to both self and others
Blind spot – information known to others but unknown to self
Hidden area – information known to oneself but kept private from others
Unknown area – information known to neither oneself or others – our potential!
In the words of Bakhtin:
To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself. A person has no internal sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another
Members can access a template of the Johari Window, and I will soon update the resources with a video on different ways to engage with the Johari Window that incorporate mindfulness practice.
I will be facilitating another What Am I Building? workshop on Saturday 6 June, 2026. Register here.
Also commencing in June is a reflective practice group exploring cultural identity and creative practice. Register here.