Participatory theatre for transformative social research

Reflecting on the transformative potential of participatory theatre methods for social research, the paper draws on a project with ethnically diverse migrant mothers in London. The research reframes the experiences and practices of socially and ethnically marginalized migrant mothers as active interventions into citizenship. We also challenge recurring public discourses casting migrant mothers as threats to social and cultural cohesion who do not contribute but instead draw on the resources of the welfare state. We highlight how participatory theatre methods create spaces for the participants to enact social and personal conflicts. It also validates migrant mothers’ subjugated knowledges of caring and culture work creating new forms of citizenship. By enacting different versions of collective stories, the theatre sessions therefore become rehearsals for socio-political transformations

Borders, risk and belonging: Challenges for arts-based research in understanding the lives of women asylum seekers and migrants ‘at the borders of humanity’

This article critically discusses the experiences of women who are seeking asylum in the North East of England and women who are mothers with no recourse to public funds living in London to address the questions posed by the special issue. It argues both epistemologically and methodologically for the benefits of undertaking participatory arts-based, ethno-mimetic, performative methods with women and communities to better understand women’s lives, build local capacity in seeking policy change, as well as contribute to theorizing necropolitics through praxis. Drawing upon artistic outcomes of research funded by the Leverhulme Trust on borders, risk and belonging, and collaborative research funded by the ESRC/NCRM using participatory theatre and walking methods, the article addresses the questions posed by the special issue: how is statelessness experienced by women seeking asylum and mothers with no recourse to public funds? To what extent are their lived experiences marked by precarity, social and civil death? What does it mean to be a woman and a mother in these precarious times, ‘at the borders of humanity’? Where are the spaces for resistance and how might we as artists and researchers ‐ across the arts, humanities and social sciences ‐ contribute and activate

Participatory Theatre and Walking as Social Research Methods - A Toolkit

The ‘Participatory Arts and Social Action in Research’ (2016-2017) (PASAR) project explores how participatory theatre and walking methods help to understand the ways in which migrant families, some of whom with limited English language knowledge, construct their sense of belonging and social participation as a citizenship practice. It is not within the scope of the toolkit to report back in detail on this research project, but rather we use the toolkit to provide examples and give a detailed idea of how these methods can be used for research. The PASAR project originated out of the need for the U.K. social science community to gain a better understanding of how participatory action approaches can engage marginalised groups in research that co-produces knowledge. Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods / Economic and Social Research Council, the PASAR project (http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/pasar) explores how walking methods and participatory theatre creates a space for exploring, sharing and documenting processes of belonging and place-making that are crucial to understanding and enacting citizenship. Participatory Action Research, based on the principles of inclusion, valuing all voices and action-oriented interventions (O’Neill and Webster 2005) allows for engaging marginalised groups in research as a citizenship practice. We are, in the U.K., experiencing a widening of inequalities. This includes material inequalities, but also of inequalities of social recognition and access to decision making. It is in this context that participatory action research (PAR) is particularly needed to more effectively engage, recognise and include marginalised groups in the research process (Luff et al. 2015). The benefits of a PAR approach include contesting existing ways of knowing, producing new knowledge with marginalised groups, and connecting to new publics, such as academics, policy makers and practitioners. PAR serves to raise awareness, challenge stereotypes and produce better knowledge and understanding and contribute to developing action, practice and policy for social justice (O’Neill and Webster 2005; O’Neill 2017; Erel at el 2017; Reynolds et al 2017; Kaptani 2018). Moreover, using participatory arts methods in research enables participants to express themselves through creative means, beyond language. This contributes to developing action, practice and policy for social justice

Practice Policy Briefing: Participatory Action Research - Engaging marginalised communities in policy and practice

This briefing explains the use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) with marginalised groups of people. In essence these were people who experience barriers in interacting with representatives of social policy and practice on a daily basis. This briefing shares our experiences and gives practical examples of how we have used PAR with a group of migrant families who find themselves in a situation of having No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). For those who lack access to power, any opportunity to express their views and experiences is better than total silence and frustration. For example the Grenfell Tower responses demonstrate how a group of people reacts to not just the tragedy, but to hearing themselves and their views represented in public for the very first time. Listening and including the voices of those affected is directly relevant for contentious but crucial policy areas. Immigration policy has in general become more restrictive, with the message of ‘control’ at the heart of public and policy debate. The case of families designated as NRPF indicates how controlled, restrictive and punitive immigration policy has become in its current practices. Where once it was the case that newly-arrived migrants could be denied benefits, even if it meant making British-born children destitute, a protracted slippery slope has led towards restricting benefits for other migrants, and beyond that to restricting access to public services such as health or education. Most people without recourse to public funds are ethnic minorities. From the time when the SS Empire Windrush landed in 1948, bringing much-needed workers from the West Indies to the UK, race and immigration have been directly linked, though more recently the link has been less clear if not broken, particularly when contrasting ‘EU’ with ‘non-EU’ migrants. While non-EU migrants clearly have fewer protections and remain vulnerable to Britain’s more restrictive immigration policies, the rise in reported hate crime post-Brexit has shown how all people seen as ‘the other’ can be affected by a xenophobic narrative

Migrant mothers’ creative interventions into racialized citizenship

Racialized migrant mothers are often cast as marginal to theoretical and political debates of citizenship, yet by taking seriously the contributions to cultural and caring citizenship they make, we challenge the racialized boundaries of citizenship. Drawing on theories of enacting citizenship, that is, challenging hegemonic narratives of who can legitimately claim to contribute to citizenship, we explore migrant women’s mothering through participatory theatre methods. Through analysis of participatory action research (PAR) with migrant mothers in London, we emphasize the significance of embodied and affective meanings for challenging racialized citizenship. The theatre methods allow participants to develop collective subjugated knowledges challenging racialized, gendered and classed stratifications of rights, burdens and privileges of caring citizenship. This draws attention to the important role of creativity of the self as an aspect of both cultural and care work for understanding racialized migrant mothers’ citizenship

A generative refusal: body inclusive methods with racialized women in knowledge creation

This paper illustrates the moving body’s direct engagement with discursive and material spaces, as well encounters in theatre methods used in knowledge production. Body-inclusive theatre-based methods aim to address two paradoxes. First, the racialised and gendered body in feminist epistemology is often theorised without the body being actively engaged in the methods that produce its theorisations, and therefore neither are body-inclusive methodological practices. This has an impact on feminist epistemologies as corporeal modes of existence, such as lived experiences, self-definition and agency require the presence of and an engagement with the moving body. This knowledge project offers another way of being in knowledge acquisition. It recognises that research often refuses the agency and personhood of the ‘researched’, and it also sets limits on epistemologies (Tuck 2009; Ng 2018; Salami 2020). There is an epistemological refusal taking place in this theatre practice: through the enactment of lived experiences with an aim to transform them; a non-binary way of making meaning of them; creativity as a process of becoming anew; and activating the agency driven human body. In this practice, racialised and migrant women explore their subjugated bodies through kinaesthetic means, namely with, from, and through their bodies. The co-creators explored the playfulness and creativity of their bodies through theatre games, living images and the creation of Physical and Forum Theatre performances (Boal 1992/2005; Lecoq et al. 2000) linked with the experience of having a female, racialised, migrant and othered body

Participatory Theatre as a Research Methodology: Identity, Performance and Social Action Among Refugees

The paper is based on the ESRC research project: \'Identity, Performance and Social Action: Community Theatre Among Refugees\' which is part of the research programme on \'Identities and Social Action.\' After describing the project, the paper examines the methodological specificities and different stages of Playback and Forum Theatre. The latter includes image work, character building, scenes and interventions. It argues that overall participatory theatre techniques as sociological research methods provide different kinds of data and information than other methods – embodied, dialogical and illustrative. The paper ends by examining in which circumstances the use of these techniques as research methodology will be beneficial and calls for an overall wider use of them in sociological research, especially for studying narratives of identity of marginalized groups as well as for illustrating perceptions and experiences of social positionings and power relations in and outside community groupings. Using participatory theatre as a research tool, therefore, can be considered as one form of action research.Playback Theatre; Forum Theatre, Refugees, Performance, Research Methods, Identity

Participatory theatre as a social research method

Dr Umut Erel and Erene Kaptani in the NCRM online resource on ‘Participatory theatre as a social research method’. This video is part of the online learning resources from the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). To access the supporting materials (presentation slides, datasets, recommended reading, links to related publications and resources) visit https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/online/participatory_theatre_research_method

Migrant mothers: Performing kin work and belonging across private and public boundaries

This article explores how migrant mothering kin work challenges private and public boundaries, giving rise to new conceptions and practices of citizenship. We highlight the potential of participatory theatre methods - specifically, forum theatre and Playback – for understanding the relationship between mothering, ethnic belonging and citizenship. We also assess the significance of migrant women’s kin work within their families and communities for re-framing notions of citizenship (Erel et al, 2017a, 2018). Our analysis gives particular focus to two scenes developed as part of the participatory theatre project that took place with a group of ethnically and racially diverse mothers in East London. The first scene, entitled ‘Where is my food?’, draws attention to the mothers’ kin work and reproductive labour operating at the boundaries of the public/private dichotomy, and also highlights gendered household dynamics. The second scene, entitled ‘At the community centre’, examines everyday encounters at the centre, and how ‘cultural work’, which is pivotal to the mothers’ kin work, informs intergenerational relations. The article argues for a more embodied understanding of citizenship in order to broaden understanding of migrant mothers’ kin work in making new citizens

Migrants Performing Citizenship: Participatory Theatre and Walking Methods for Research

This chapter introduces a participatory arts based research project with migrant families, reflecting on how we might think of this research as an act of citizenship. It argues that by working together with migrant mothers and young girls, as well as organisations that focus on the rights of migrant and Black and Minority Ethnic people, we can co-produce knowledge that challenges social exclusion and racist and sexist subjugation of migrant girls and mothers. This project has the potential to not only generate new knowledge and insights, but it also illustrates that participatory arts-based research can be considered an act of citizenship. This is because it contests existing forms of citizenship that inscribe privileges, and brings into being new modes of rights and rights-claiming subjects