Background

20 years ago

Zen in the Art of Occupational Therapy, Part 1 and 2

British Journal of Occupational Therapy, March and April 1991

Proposed that development of OT has been influenced by Eastern philosophy

Inspired by cult novel Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Persig, 1974)

The Kawa Model

developed in response

to need for a more

culturally sensitive

model

encorporates Eastern

beliefs and

philosophies

Figure 1: Life is like a river, flowing from birth to end of life

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s

The Project

Development of a digital story in which central

character is an occupational therapy (OT) student who sets out on a heroic quest.

Existing, familiar stories used as a template to create a mythical world.

OT students worldwide invited to contribute with metaphorical stories reflecting their own experiences, or by providing illustrations to the stories.

Aims

By exploring difficult concepts through creating

digital myths, based on shared experiences, OTs may be better able to understand and interpret these concepts with reference to their own experiences.

Online discussion forum will be used to determine what, if anything, has been gained from the experience from those who have actively or passively (as readers) engaged in the collaborative story.

Digital Storytelling

the use of computer-based tools to tell stories

usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music

(Alexander and Levine, 2008).

Anticipated Outcomes

By exploring difficult concepts of OT through creating digital myths based on shared experiences, students may be better able to understand and interpret these concepts with reference to their own experiences.

On the day she was due totravel to OS she arrived at thetrain station and suddenlyrealised that she had misreadher travel schedule (herdyslexia occasionally stillcaused her some problems)and that she had missed herflight.

Being late on her first daywould create such a badimpression, she thought, andshe burst into tears.

Then a strange thing happened.Dorothy whirled around two orthree times and rose slowlythrough the air up, up and awayinto the sky. She felt as if shewere going up in a balloon and asif she were being rocked gently,like a baby in a cradle.

It reminded her of the feeling shehad when her occupationaltherapist had rocked her on aplatform swing as part of hertherapy.

She noticed three youngJapanese men coming towardher. They were all dressed incolourful costumes.

“Just like Hiro!” one of themexclaimed, referring to thepopular television series, Heroes.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Los Angeles Airport”, explainedthe second man.

Kawa-no-Kami had spent toomuch time in the West. He nowlooked more like an Americancomic book superhero than aJapanese River God.

He had persuaded threeJapanese students to abandonWestern models of OT and to findtheir own Japanese model of OT.

Their audacity had been frownedupon by their tutors and they hadbeen sent on a Journey to theWest to find the true meaning ofoccupation.

Progress-to-date

Article published in BJOT attracted interest from OT

practitioners in England and an OT educator in New Zealand

Editorial team formed to develop, and edit, the evolving story

Website taking longer than expected to develop…but nearly there now

Moving away from a “graphic novel” to a traditional story book look for website

Paper presented at All Ireland OT Conference in Dundalk in April 2011.

Link to website