This has been an amazing year, studying Applied Theatre (Drama in the Community and Drama Education) at the Central School of Speech and Drama.  Can’t wait to continue with work in The Netherlands. Will keep the blog updated as soon as I’m settled in again. Thank you for following so far! Suzanxx

In this blogpost I would like to share with you two examples of applied theatre practices that help children through drama. The post includes two videos that illustrate the practice.

Speech Bubbles by London Bubble

The first example is the Speech Bubbles programme of London Bubble Theatre Company. As part of my placement at London Bubble I got the opportunity to participate in a couple of Speech Bubbles sessions at primary schools in Southwark, South London.

Research (Bercow report 2008:13) shows that 50% of the children from ‘some socio- economically disadvantaged populations have speech and language skills that are significantly lower than those of other children of the same ageʼ. Intervention in the early years in children’s development of their communication skills can prevent behavioural issues, social and psychological difficulties and drop-out from the education system (Bercow report 2008:14).

This video shows (more…)

Midst of MA dissertation-stress a guest post by my amazing colleague and dear friend Alyssa Grace Sorresso. Alyssa is a writer and applied theatre practitioner hailing from the windy city of Chicago. She is currently finishing her Master in Applied Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. You can find more of her work on her website or follow her as tactless_grace on twitter.

I recently listened to a fantastic WNYC Radiolab podcast episode called Help! which showcased people devising creative ways to help themselves out of a bind.

A particularly interesting segment focused on an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert talks about bargaining with her muses. She references an interview she conducted with Tom Waits, a famous American singer-songwriter, in which he described openly conversing with his songs; bargaining, yelling, and cajoling them out of his brain and (more…)

In my previous blogpost I have introduced the thought from Giddens that we are ‘reflexive human beings’ engaged in ‘life politics’. With this I mean that we are reflecting on a daily basis on our lives and planning the future based on that reflection.

An illustration you might know is the daily planning all of us are involved in constantly; about our money, our savings, our retirement, our future career, our health, etc. All the planning we are preoccupied with today is planning in the now for the future.

One can question whether we experience the here and now at all, and thus as Harari (2009:174) says: ‘the ‘here and now’ is probably the most challenging quest of (theatrical) performance’.

In my personal experience – as a facilitator and as a participant –there is a point in almost every drama workshop where the here and now is the only thing (more…)

As you can read in my previous post about term three, I am following the course “writing with communities” as part of my MA in “Applied Theatre (Drama in the Community and Drama Education)” at the Central School of Speech and Drama. My tutor for this course is Sara Clifford. She works as a play writer and drama practitioner in different community settings, such as educational, health and criminal justice settings. At the moment she is working on a site specific community theatre play for Newhaven Ferry, supported by the Arts Council

I enjoy following this course a lot.

Writing with communities is all about the different community settings (more…)

I’m not doing this master “Applied Theatre (Drama in the Community and Drama Education)” at the Central School of Speech and Drama by myself. I’m part of an amazing group of very ambitious and extremely talented people. Over the past weeks I’ve been stunned to see each of them getting involved in very challenging projects, either here in London, Ecuador, India or Mexico.

Term 3 started a few weeks ago and this term is entirely focused on practical work we do in projects we set up ourselves or we deliver at placements. This means that before our summer “joy” of dissertation starts, we are putting all our skills and knowledge gained so far in practice.

This blog is about us, about my future network. I’m extremely proud (more…)

In my previous blogpost I have described the way we learn and how we can realise participatory and engaged learning by using drama or creativity in education.

In this blogpost I would like to share with you my  own experiences from two primary schools in London, where creativity in education was used in literacy and numeracy classes. Before that, I will try to explain to you why creative learning is of utmost importance.

The importance of creative learning in theory

In his famous TED-talks, the  international educationalist Sir Ken Robinson questions our education system. As we learn according to how we are taught, he says, is the school system prepared to educate the workforce of the future? Are we preparing our children to deal with the (more…)

As promised in my first post about drama and education, I have given the way we learn some more thought. I also expressed the hope that I soon could use drama as a practice for participatory and engaged learning. So I did, and I can conclude from my own experience now that using drama and creativity is an immense resource for learning.

The most important thing is that drama or creativity connects our minds with our bodies, and then connects us with the world we live in. Learning takes place because we have physical experiences, because we identify and explore the subject to be learned by actually doing it or acting it out (see if you want to learn more about this for instance “Out of our minds, learning to be creative” by Ken Robinson (2001)).

My personal experience is founded on research too. Cross-national European research (DICE 2010) shows that (more…)

From September 2010, I am studying “Applied Theatre (Drama in the Community and Drama Education)” at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. The past few weeks were all about settling down in my new house and getting to know London. Since last Wednesday I am officially a student at Central, which shifted everything in a higher gear…

I told you in my first post about my motivation for this course and London. Now that the course has actually started, let me try to share some of my latest thoughts on the coming year with you.

What does my course actually look like?

My course at Central is not a regular one. For instance, my school attendance is not fulltime. This term I will only follow one weekly Friday of Pedagogies, combined with Critical Context (theory) classes on Saturdays. The guideline for fulltime students for the first term is to spend one day reading, 2-3 days at your placement and only 1-2 days at school.

The learning outcome of the pedagogy unit is (more…)

From September 2010, I am studying “Applied Theatre (Drama in the Community and Drama Education)” at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In my first blog post I explained more about this Masters and I mentioned that the UK is the place to be for participatory theatre.

However, I must mention here an extremely professional Dutch organization I met last May in the Netherlands, called “Formaat, Workplace for Participatory Drama”. They made a huge impression on me. Let me tell you something about my experiences with working with them.

My first encounter with Formaat was on a course day of the Joker Training in their physical Workplace, a nice working space with a view on the Port of Rotterdam. As a born and raised “Amsterdammer” I always feel a bit lost when I arrive at Rotterdam Central Station, with its large skyscrapers and immense (more…)