Welcome to Positively Portsmouth: Passport to Success

The Pygmalion Effect in action. I believe that what the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, Cllr Cheryl Buggy has done is to tap into these childrens' potential by using the expectations of them to get the best out of them. In the City of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom this fantastic project; "Passport to Success" is bringing out the best of the city's young people.

Excerpt taken from article below:

"At the end of the first year, all of the participants will attend a celebration and prize-giving event in the Guildhall, where they will receive a certificate of completion from the Lord Mayor."

For more infomation please follow this link:  http://w1.hcprojects.co.uk/

Presupposition, Clarification and Intention

I am now going to state a presupposition, a clarification and an overriding intention of the project before I go further with my blogging proper. That is writing about my life and how “The Pygmalion Effect” is helping improve it and enabling me to become the best that I can be and live my life to its optimum expression.

Presupposition

The presupposition in this title is that ‘The Pygmalion Effect’ does indeed exist. Although this can be argued and no doubt will be in the course of this project I feel that it is in my interest and maybe yours also to come back to the positive conclusion that it does exist in a beneficial way. It can also be argued that there is a negative aspect to this phenomenon; the nocebo. I will spend a short time on this and will not dwell on it.

Clarification

To be clear the Pygmalion I am talking about in ‘The Pygmalion Effect” is named after Pygmalion a Cypriot sculptor in a narrative by Ovid in Greek mythology, who fell in love with a female statue he had carved out of ivory. Some modern cultural examples being My Fair Lady film and stage, Educating Rita film and stage and although it has been commented that Trading Places is a modern take on Mark Twain's classic 19th century novel The Prince and the Pauper, which itself was also a satire I would contend that it has elements of the Pygmalion Effect in the part of Eddie Murphy’s character Billy Ray Valentine. As also I feel there is an element of the Pygmalion Effect in Michael J. Fox’s character Brantley Foster in the 1987 film The Secret of My Success.

The Intention

I have all ready set out the goals and objectives of this project. The intention that I now write of is the over arching intention of this project and anything I do that is connected to it. This intention is inspired by the author of Esther & Jerry Hicks fame: Jerry Hicks. In fact it is a paraphrase of his exact words in the preface of “The Astonishing Power of Emotions”.

‘It is my intention that the lives of anybody that gets involved with this project or me through this project will be elevated as a result of their involvement and our interaction, or they be left where they are, but that no one will be diminished as a result of their association with me.” 

Terms of reference

                                                           Feast of the Guardian Angels 2nd October 2011

The objective of this Blog is to have enough posts, debate, argument and polemic along with several followers discussing and doing justice to the title:  “Who does ‘The Pygmalion Effect’ belong to?”  A secondary optional objective would be for this Blog to be the beginnings of a book proposal and being source material for the book. The title of the book is still to be decided.

The Stakeholders will be me and a few other people who will be named as the project goes along. Roles and responsibilities will be assigned as and when new stakeholders join the project.

There are no financial resources and I am currently the sole stakeholder and quality controller.

The 'Work breakdown structure' (WBS) and schedule are to follow. The current due date is 1st October 2012

"The Wounded Healer"