Mirror, dynamo or lens? Drama, children and social change

In this talk I will outline a collection of metaphors in search of an idea that can express theatre’s potential as a form of social pedagogy and socialisation both for young people of school age and also for its other audiences and makers. In talking of a pedagogy of theatre I will borrow from the late John McGrath’s use of the term a ‘learning paedia’ which he succinctly distils into two main features: Accuracy – the audience must recognise and accept the emotional and social veracity of what is happening on stage, must identify with the core situation, whatever styly may be used to present it. Relevance – the core situation must reflect the central, most profound realities of its time, must speak to its audiences about a truth that matters in their lives, whether social, moral, political, emotional or individual I (McGrath 2002, p. 138) To these features of truthfulness and relevance he adds the core principle that theatre should use all possible means to reach every citizen and not act as ‘an excluding agency, whether by the price of its tickets, the manner of its box office staff, its location or its impenetrability’ (ibid. p.139)

Getting off the subject: English, drama, media and the commonwealth of powerful culture

There is an old riddle that makes us teachers chuckle knowingly. Imagine that a train driver, a surgeon and a teacher fell asleep in 1908 and woke up to go to work in 2008. Which one of them would notice they had been asleep for a century? The same rows of chairs, the same mode of instruction in many cases, the same content and modes of assessment. The same power and powerlessness between teachers and learners over what is learnt , how it is learnt and how it is valued through assessment. Our early 20c teacher would wake to find that in many places what young people are taught as valuable and socially controlled knowledge is still comfortably organised into „subjects‟. And that of these subjects English, along with Science and Maths are the kings of the curriculum. Over the sleeping century in the UK we have become naturalised into thinking that subjects are our only means of organising, delivering and assessing what young people learn about their worlds through schooling. Our children study the world through the frames of subjects and their success in later life will largely depend on their success in subject-based rather than real world-based learning. Primacy is given to achieving success in subjects rather than in a broader range of personal and social achievements and therefore to a curriculum which tends to isolate and reify the facts and figures from live(d) human experience

Taming the political: the struggle over recognition in the politics of applied theatre

The emerging sub-field of applied theatre encompasses a wide range of pro-social 'alternative' theatre practices, but it also refers to a discursive practice that seeks to reconcile the apparently contradictory claims of the politics of egalitarian redistribution and the politics of difference. The argument in this paper is that this emerging political position reflects a contemporary turn towards the identity politics of recognition and away from political theatre's traditional concern with the 'old left' politics of redistribution. A critique of the discourse of applied theatre, based on the political philosophy of Nancy Fraser and James Tully, leads to a consideration of the potential of a new left politics of recognition and dialogue in which the processes of participation in social and artistic struggle are seen as the practice of civic dialogic freedom

The art of togetherness: reflections on some essential artistic and pedagogic qualities of drama curricula

The paper examines two quite different examples of drama and theatre education in order to identify how drama curricula are shaped both by external forces and by a common pedagogic and artistic tradition or trajectory. The paper argues that the first and most significant shaping of curriculum is in response to the ideological and political imperatives of the government in power and that this shaping shifts in response to shifts in the field of power. However, the paper argues for maintaining a critical and pro-social pedagogy as the core of any drama curriculum whatever its technical appearance might be. This pedagogy is identified through the two cases and placed in a wider context of pedagogic and artistic thought and practice with the suggestion that by better understanding how the rich traditions of drama and theatre education sit within a broader struggle to give young people pro-social and critical pedagogic and artistic opportunities, drama can strengthen its resolve during periods of curriculum reform

The English model of creativity : cultural politics of an idea

The paper presents a socio-political analysis of New Labour’s rhetorical uses of the idea and values of creativity to shape cultural policy in England. It will examine how the current idea of creativity in policy discussions has been politically reconceptualised as a means of responding to broader socio-political and economic agendas. The paper will explore the extent to which New Labour’s social-market political paradigm has contributed to shaping and reshaping the government’s creativity rhetoric. It is suggested that the English model of creativity in policy discourse is politically constructed rather than being based in the available literature and research associated with creativity in the fields of psychology and sociology. Drawing on these discussions, the paper will suggest that there are five distinctive characteristics of the English model of creativity and offer a critical analysis about some underlying assumptions embedded in these rhetorical positions

Democratic and participatory theatre for social justice : there has never been a famine in a democracy. But there will be

At the heart of any theatre practice that is committed to social justice is a commitment to the values and practices of social justice in its making and expressions. These values of inclusion, equitable distribution, rules freely accepted, the right of argument and choice are also the core values of an authentic democracy (Castoriadis 1983). When groups of people come together to make and share theatre that both models and exposes social justice they engage within a temporary culture often spatially symbolised by a circle. The circle challenges hierarchical relationships of power, encourages participation and dialogue and does not artificially separate participants into actors and spectators of action. In this chapter I want to argue that a democratic and participatory theatre for social justice shares both the values and the characteristics of participatory democratic politics and social forms of play in childhood

Open-space Learning

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open-space Learning offers a unique resource to educators wishing to develop a workshop model of teaching and learning. The authors propose an embodied, performative mode of learning that challenges the primacy of the lecture and seminar model in higher education. Drawing on the expertise of the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning) at the University of Warwick, they show how pedagogic techniques developed from the theatrical rehearsal room may be applied effectively across a wide range of disciplines. The book offers rich case-study materials, supplemented by video and documentary resources, available to readers electronically. These practical elements are supplemented by a discursive strand, which draws on the methods of thinkers such as Freire, Vygotsky and Kolb, to develop a formal theory around the notion of Open-space Learning. CAPITAL was a collaboration between the University of Warwick's Department of English and the Royal Shakespeare Company. CAPITAL was succeeded by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) in 2010

Open-space Learning

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open-space Learning offers a unique resource to educators wishing to develop a workshop model of teaching and learning. The authors propose an embodied, performative mode of learning that challenges the primacy of the lecture and seminar model in higher education. Drawing on the expertise of the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning) at the University of Warwick, they show how pedagogic techniques developed from the theatrical rehearsal room may be applied effectively across a wide range of disciplines. The book offers rich case-study materials, supplemented by video and documentary resources, available to readers electronically. These practical elements are supplemented by a discursive strand, which draws on the methods of thinkers such as Freire, Vygotsky and Kolb, to develop a formal theory around the notion of Open-space Learning. CAPITAL was a collaboration between the University of Warwick's Department of English and the Royal Shakespeare Company. CAPITAL was succeeded by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) in 2010