365 days of the Critical Physiotherapy Network
The CPN is 1 year old today.
To celebrate how far we've come in such a short space of time, I thought it might be timely to look back on some of the things we've achieved as a Network:
The Network started with an email to six people who had talked informally about forming a group of like-minded critical thinkers in physiotherapy. This email snowballed until we had 24 people signed up by the the end of the first week and more were added each week as people heard about us. People were saying that the group was an idea who's time had come, and it quickly became clear that there were dozens of physiotherapists who thought 'differently' about physiotherapy, all looking for a safe place to share their ideas and explore their passion for an 'otherwise' physiotherapy.
The group grew so quickly that we needed to form an Executive. A call went out and the current five members of the Exec generously responded. We held our first videoconference meeting on 31st October 2014 and have met once a month ever since.
The '30 days of September' (30DoS) campaign drew people's interest and activity in the CriticalPhysio website grew rapidly. Since its inception there have been 50,000 views of the site and 30,000 visitors. One one day alone the site was viewed more than 3,000 times.
During the 30DoS campaign, people voted on the things that they would like the Network should do for them. The most popular options were explaining philosophy to physios; starting a critical physiotherapy journal; running a colloquium in the South of France; collaborating on a critical physiotherapy book; and running a webinar.
This gave the Executive a clear steer and we've been working through these over the first six months of 2015. We began with a bold project to write a journal article on a subject that was both contemporary and philosophically challenging, with invited members - most of whom had never met - setting ourselves the challenge to complete it within six months. Anyone who felt they could make a substantial contribution to the paper became an author, and as a result we had eight contributors to a paper called Connectivity: An emerging concept in physiotherapy practice which will be ready for publication by the end of this week. We're now undertaking the same process with our first edited book provisionally titled Critical Studies in Physiotherapy.
In June, a number of CPN members met up at WCPT in Singapore, and a dozen members congregated at the In Sickness and In Health conference in Mallorca. At these meeting the depth of critical scholarship now emerging in the profession became clear, as a host of diverse thinkers showed they could hold their own with some of the most advanced scholarship happening anywhere.
So how are we celebrating the CPN's birthday over the next few days? Well, we'll be unveiling some new ideas and developments that coincide with the launch of the site, including an entirely new website with a host of new features including a discussion forum, membership database and archive. We'll also be launching our new constitution translated into 11 languages, some new logos, and access to full text articles published by members of the group.
We'll be posting regularly through our Twitter handle @CriticalPhysio and on our Facebook page CriticalPhysiotherapyNetwork, and keeping members updated through regular emails.
If you'd like to become a member of the Network, it's free, and all you have to do is click on the 'Database of Network Members' link at the top of this webpage. You can also follow the regular blogposts by scrolling to the bottom of this page and following the instructions there.
We look forward to seeing you soon!