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 how participating in Speech Bubbles helps the children to develop confidence in communication through playing games, storytelling and acting out own stories and group stories. I highly recommend to watch the video below and if after that you want to know more you can always visit London Bubble’s website.

Earthquake in Christchurch: A teaspoon of light by Applied Theatre consultants Ltd

A second project I’d like to share with you is from New Zealand

In the video below Dr Peter O’Connor, Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, explains about how they helped children and teachers in schools affected by the earthquake, using the arts:

“We were offering very practical strategies for teachers. All teachers were going to have to deal with kids coming back into the classrooms and what were they going to do? Were they going to ignore what had happened? Were they going to address it, if they were going to address it what were safe, practical ways to do that? (…) We help kids and teachers make sense of what is happening.” (quote from Peter O’Connor from the Youtube video below)

If you want to learn more about Applied Theatre Consultants Ltd and their other work, for instance with children and abuse, do visit their website. For now, I recommend you watch this movie about the project in Christchurch and get inspired (and goose bumped) by a teaspoon of light…

I’m genuinely touched by companies such as the above that work so hard for the wellbeing of children and prove the arts/drama is an amazing means to do so.

References:

• Bercow report 

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 into reality. Gilbert took this method to heart and began recognizing her own creative muses by speaking to them aloud, asking them to reveal her book title, or share the idea for her next novel.

Getting stuck inside our heads

I found this idea of bargaining and speaking to your muses oddly comforting, especially now, when I am entrenched in the havoc and disorder of dissertation writing, looking for any potential glimmer of creative lifelines. As theatre artists, we often become drained of ideas, unable to think of innovative ways to address challenges in our work. We can feel very alone in this lack of creativity, even when surrounded by other facilitators or perhaps an entire arts company. We forget to speak out loud about our challenges and instead become stuck inside our heads.

Dialogue with our muses

But there is a difference between speaking to another person and addressing your muse. In this interview, Gilbert describes her muses as tangible beings waiting to be acknowledged with dialogue. She suggests that when we voice our fears and desires, it becomes an exchange with something or someone. The muses are our own and the discussion intimate and not replicable with another human being.

I also think of the American feminist and author bell hooks (2007) and her writings of angels. She states,

“The presence of angels…reminds us that there is a realm of mystery that cannot be explained by human intellect or will.  We all experience this mystery in our daily lives in some ways, however small, whether we see ourselves as “spiritual” or not.  We find ourselves in the right place at the right time, ready and able to receive blessings without knowing just how we got there” (bell hooks 2000: 236).

Could this not be the essence of the creative presence? Angel, muse, or as hooks quotes Alice Miller, “enlightened witness”…all have significance and meaning in our lives and culture. When we feel blocked creatively, is it in part from a lack of dialogue with our muses? Do we experience these frustrations because we do not trust, or are not willing to believe in, their power and ability to assist us? Is this lack of belief what stops us from asking in the first place?

In my personal experience, it is difficult to ask for help from people, much less from the air. While speaking aloud by myself seems like it should be an area of non-judgment, a place to freely express my ideas, artistic and otherwise, making the sound come out, or even making time for the practice, is something I almost consciously avoid. The promise within this expanse is intimidating—what could happen in there?  Perhaps this is why we sometimes minimize practices like prayer or meditation—because at the core of our reaction, we are afraid of the space they provide to nurture and unlock potential within ourselves.

If I do muster up the courage, there is definitely one thing I’d like to say to all my muses: Ladies and gentleman, we need to talk.

References:

• Hooks, b. (2000) All About Love: new visions, New York, William Morrow and Company, Inc.
• Radiolab is a radio programme based out of New York City broadcast by National Public Radio.

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 that matters. The outside world, the past and the future become less important than the (creative) process of the group. In this post I will investigate what ‘being in the here and now’ means. What happens to our sense of self in that moment?

I am aware this post will only be a humble attempt to investigate the essence of being thoroughly. Throughout human history many (existentialist) philosophers have written extensively about the topic, such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre. Therefore, in this post I will focus at the process of “being” in a drama workshop: how do you become yourself, and get liberated from all the anxieties and worries you bring in from the outside world?

Being-in-itself and being-for-itself

To understand what being might mean, I appreciate the distinction Sartre (1975) makes in Being and Nothingness between “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”. Following this idea, only when we become aware of the presence of “others”, we become self-consciousness. As an example of this process, Sartre uses shame (1957:245):

“I am ashamed of what I am. Shame therefore realizes an intimate relation of myself to myself. Through shame I have discovered an aspect of my being. (…) the Other is the indispensable mediator between myself and me. I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the other.”

In other words: it’s when we become aware of the other looking at us, we start reflecting on ourselves. This is when we move, as Orkibi (2010:195) calls it “from a non-reflective mode to a reflective mode of being”, or in Sartre’s words from “being-in-itself” towards “being-for-itself”. What does this transition in being mean for drama?

Being in drama

An interesting writer about this is Richard Courtney (1989). He gives a useful definition of being in drama: “Being is consciousness: who we are. Becoming is the potentially of being: our consciousness of ‘what happens next’.”

From a theatre point of view “what happens next” is essential, since it is exactly this moment where the drama enters. This is what Stanislavski means with the “magic if” moment, where ‘identification with the character releases energy, deepens feeling and enables the player to elaborate experience essential for maturation” (Courtney 1998:61). This “Magic if” acting technique by Stanislavski asks from a participant in a drama workshop to accept the play world as fictional, but to believe at the same time in the situation being played. This leads them to “live “at life rate” in the fictional time and place” (1998:61).

Maybe this is also what Augusto Boal (1995:42) identifies as the “metaxis”: “the state of belonging completely and simultaneously to two different, autonomous worlds: the image of the reality and the reality of the image.” Here, Boal means that an actor is both the actor in the play, as involved in real life in the scene performed on stage– “the oppressed becomes the artist” (1995:43).

Who we are lies at the core of dramatic action

However, to reach this interesting dramatic moment, first we have to experience who we are, without us perceiving we’re being judged and labelled by others. As Courtney (1989:57) continues: “who we are lies at the core of dramatic action”. These are exactly the moments I recognize and mentioned earlier from my own drama workshops: when there is a full engagement in the group, a 100% presence and being in the here and now. Once this is established, drama or creativity easily develops.

Being in the moment: flow

The famous psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (1975) illustrates with his concept of ‘flow’ the process of becoming who we are in a drama workshop. This is the moment were one is ‘too involved with the experience to reflect on it’ (1975:46). Once liberated from our reflective thoughts haunting us throughout the day, we are so involved in the moment we forget to think reflective thoughts like “am I doing well?” or “should I be doing this?”. Once these reflective thoughts come into our mind we become aware of ourselves again and we find ourselves back in the reflective mode of being.

Csikszentmihalyi (1997) recognizes that these moments of flow are more likely to occur while involved in physical, social and active activities such as exercise, playing a musical instrument or going out than they are to occur in work (although this depends on the nature of the work), maintenance and passive activities such as housework or watching television. I think a drama workshop offers excellent conditions to let the flow emerge, since it’s physical, experience based and in cooperation with others.

Being in the moment: turn of the ‘self monitor’

What a dramaworkshop essentially offers is an invitation of the imaginary world. Through drama we are encouraged to associate, to fantasize and to use ‘out of the box’ thoughts we might have. This can reward us – at least for a moment – with the experience to turn off the ‘self-monitor’. Our ‘self-monitor’ criticises us and exclusively tells us what we are not good at. In a drama workshop, we are allowed to play again.

It’s only after we have liberated ourselves of our criticasters – and we‘ve moved from the reflective mode to the non-reflective mode – that we can start the journey called: “what happens if?” (Coventon 2011:xv).

Conclusion

To be in the moment is a difficult quest. As part of my research project I have followed a clown course. The most important element of clowning is being in the moment. To dive into who you are, and to be who you are in the moment, one must get rid of one’s self monitor. Achieving an awareness of the here and now is needed to explore our feelings and situations, the basis for any dramatic action.

Having drama as a profession allows me to challenge myself every day to achieve this level of presence in the here and now. In every workshop I facilitate I try to get my participants to engage, to leave the outer world outside, to put thoughts on the past and the future aside and to set out together on the journey, answering the interesting question: what happens if?

I started this post with Sartre’s distinction between being for itself and being in itself. It is, I believe, only decent to end with some words of Sartre about theatre. Sartre means with his thoughts about imagination, transformation and dramatic action, that “we are nothing without playing at being”.

References

• Coventon, J. (2010) ‘Introduction – A Good Place to Be. On Being inspired by Drama’, in Drama to inspire, a London Guide to excellent practice in drama for young people, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books: ix-xv.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975) Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers.Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Finding Flow. The psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, New York, Basic Books.
• Courtney, R. (1989) Play, Drama & Thought. The Intellectual Background to Dramatic Education, Toronto, Simon & Pierre Publishing Company Limited.
• Orkibi, H. (2010) ‘The experience of acting: A synthesis of concepts and a clinical vignette’ Journal of Applied Arts and Health, vol. 1, no. 2: 193-203.
• Sartre, J.P. (1957) Being and Nothingness, An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology reprinted 2003, London and New York, Routledge Classics.

Pictures by Plays4me, rmkoske, Felipe Canova, arimoore, manville and lord marmalade on Flickr

Growing up in our education system

What are the messages young people get exposed to about risk? Young people growing up in our education system today get different messages about risk, because there are different paradigms on risk in the socio – political context surrounding them. According to the NESTA REPORT of 2010 “learning to take risk, learning to succeed” there are two conflicting views of risk.

On the one hand Western culture could be seen as extremely risk-averse. Risk is viewed as “largely negative, linked to danger and seen as something to be avoided” (2010:7). You can find some nice examples in the pictures above and below, a warning against meeting strangers and quite remarkable: a warning against children themselves at play.

Another message is revealed in the term ‘risk-management’. The word management implies that risk is something to be controlled, or even ‘avoided and eliminated’ (2010:7). Make good choices, safe choices avoid the risky ones. Here, risk-adversity goes hand in hand with conformity – deviation from the scientifically or culturally defined norm’ as Harari (2009:174) states.

Risk society and Risk culture

This belief of us, planning and inventing our own life’s, leads back to the notion of Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991) on ‘risk society’ and ‘risk culture’. According to these sociologists, we are reflexive human beings, engaged in ‘life politics’, as Giddens (1991:215) calls it, almost obsessed with planning for the future and protecting ourselves from possible harm.  One can question if we still know how to exist in the here and now…

The importance of risk taking

But there are positive messages about risks too. Businesses stress that taking risks are essential for innovation, confidence-building and decision-making in the workforce: “The experience of failure, as a result of risk taking in a safe environment, can help to build resilience to setbacks and help young people to manage risk better in the future” (NESTA report 2010:3).

Trendy risk taking behaviour

There is also what Harari terms as the modern ‘positive allure’ of risk – the trendy risk-taking choices among some celebrities and glorified in the media. Examples are shown in the pictures: sex parties, sky diving and drug-taking – certain risks in our society that are no longer considered deviant or negative, but are welcomed, since they are ‘interrupting the flow of everyday life’, as Harari (2009:174) continues.

How are schools positioned around the term ‘risk’?

As our research context was specifically focused on the education system we asked how schools were positioned around the term ‘risk.’

The Health and Safety document found on The Department for Education website advises that on and off the school premises ‘risk-assessment should be undertaken of all activities and measures put in place to minimize or control risks.’ We considered the messages this language and these measures might send to children and the implications for them in what could be considered the highly controlled school environment.

Risky behavior and ‘at risk’ youth

We asked what risks were involved if children conform to ‘the system’ – and realized you risk ‘throwing away your life… your future, don’t you?’. The youth who rebels against the system is often negatively named – ‘at risk’ – or involved in ‘risky behavior’ and the fear, based on the logic of economics, is that ‘at risk’ youth will not become productive, contributing members of society. (Conrad 2005: 29).

Research that positivises risk in schools

Research that positivised risk in schools and existing educational settings which applauded risk-taking proved harder to find. This seemed to validate our research intentions. Richard Gerver,  however, praised for setting up the highly successful and original Grange Primary School, speaks in a recent publication of – ‘The Positivity of Failure’- linking a successful education system to a correct understanding of ‘the concept of failure and the notion of risk (2010:29)’.

To explore failure in schools

In ruminating through which door to enter the educational setting and pursue our creative research, we drew from The QCA document on – Personal, Social and Health and Citizenship Education PSHCE– which states that at Key Stage 3 ‘… pupils explore failure and learn from their mistakes. They may ‘’experiment with risk-taking through drama and role play’’ QCA (2010: 10). We researchers agreed that the PSHCE route would instantly justify our research purposes when approaching a school.

To conclude

Through our research we were interested to see how children specifically, in an educational setting perceived risk. Our aim was to set up a workshop in a school that enabled us to view this. As researching artists we welcomed the creative avenue open to us and with the theories of creative learning and play theory  as our methodology. In future blogpost I will explain more about how we used clowning as part of our methodology.

For now we can conlcude that children might like to take risks and governments/ businesses stress the importance of learning to take risks, but are at the same time surrounded by behaviour conducts telling them otherwise:

References

• Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity, London, SAGE Publications
• Conrad, D. (2005) ‘Rethinking Youth ‘at-risk’ in drama education: beyond prescribed roles’, Research in Drama Education, vol.10, no. 2:27-41
• Gerver, R. (2010) Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today, London, Continuum
• Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, Polity.
• Harari, D. (2009) ‘Risk in Performance: Facing the Future’ Theatre Research International, vol. 34, no. 2: 173–179
• National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts (NESTA – Making Innovation Flourish) report (2010) Learning to take risks, learning to succeed

Pictures by Leo Reynolds, Wesley Fryer, Alessio85, baerchen57, GoGap, DNQA, Behrooz Nobakht and Tim_Norris

I enjoy following this course a lot.

Writing with communities is all about the different community settings in which we – drama practitioners, writers and artists – gather stories. These stories can eventually form the basis for a (community) theatre play.

What does the course look like?

The course is divided in different themes. This means we’ve looked at:

• verbatim theatre (documentary theatre): its history and different approaches
• site specific theatre: working with a community in situ
• writing in prisons and health settings
• facilitating and devising work with older people or intergenerational projects
• and facilitating and devising with young people.

To finish the course we will work one day as a group in creating our own performance as a community. An MA class of drama students has become a community in itself over the weeks they followed a course together. I can’t wait to witness this end result!

So far, every course day included short lectures, practical exercises and group reading of key (play) texts followed by group reflection. Specific texts or companies are used as case studies.

In practice this means Sara asks us to write, read and devise a lot ourselves. She starts the day usually with simple warm up writing exercises, which we later devise further into scenes.

An example of a writing exercise

Let me highlight one of the warm up writing exercises I enjoyed a lot, and will definitely use in my further practice. It’s an excellent way for a group of people that do not know each other to get to know each other better. I will also share my end result at the bottom of this page, but invite you to continue reading this blog with a pen and paper ready and to practice it yourself. All you need to do is follow my instructions (only if you feel like off course).

Ready? (You need paper and a pen to continue)

The idea is you will create a piece of writing about where you’re from. Think about the place you’re from. This could be the place you were born, or where you’ve lived almost all your life, the place you feel you’re from or the place you are living at the moment: it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s the place that represents for you where you’re from.

• Now write down 5 locations you can find in this place. Don’t think too long about it. Take a few minutes only.
• Now write down 5 colours you see here. Again, don’t think too much, just try to write down colours you see thinking about this place.
• Now write down 5 things you associate with this place. These things can’t be human beings. Again, try not to overanalyse.
• You’ve now gathered 15 words.
• Rearrange these words in alphabetical order.
• Once you’ve made this list in alphabetical order, try to connect these 15 words in such a way they make a poem together.
• If you feel a word is not fitting in, you may change the order of the words a little, or delete one of the words if, for instance, that word doesn’t make sense in the poem.

As a facilitator, you can ask people to share their end result in the group. If you do that, make sure you mention this beforehand. This way people can take this into account whilst writing and can decide what they want to share with the group. Another and perhaps safer possibility is to share the results in pairs (with your neighbour). This way you get to know your neighbour better without immediate exposure to the whole group.

My end result…

I hope you have finished your poem by now. It was amazing to hear the different results from my classmates, they were all very different in style (we shared in pairs btw, after which it was voluntarily to share in the group). Please find my humble attempt below; it’s about Amsterdam, where I am from:

In Amsterdam,
the old Ajax stadion
There I am, on my bike,
Suzy Blue

Along the canals,
grey sky,
the Leidseplein
And home;
the Hogeweg

Hey! It’s the Linnaeusstraat,
where I was born
Orange baby
Pink love

Wearing my raincoat,
little red me
Will keep me dry
from the water.

By reading this poem you got to know something about me. You can see in the poem the colours (orange, red, pink, grey and blue), the things (water, bike, raincoat, canals – and one I left out) and locations (Hogeweg, Linnaeusstraat, Leidseplein, Amsterdam and Ajax stadion) that represent for me where I’m from.

Your end result?

If you have any comments about how you’re poem turned out I’m happy to hear these below! Maybe it didn’t work for you, maybe you got stuck or maybe you are amazed by your own work . Basically, this exercise shows how giving a simple structure can help to get people into writing. And it shows a different way of getting to know each other as a group!

If you want to find more simple exercises like this and further character development/play writing exercises I can recommend the book “Playwriting. A practical Guide” by Noel Greig.

Pictures by jipacres, Bloggingdragger, dutchamsterdam and FaceMePLS on Flickr.

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 to be part of this group of brave, attentive, innovative and talented people.

Let me share their work with you

Two classmates from the part-time year, Jayne and Ali, used their term break from teaching drama in English schools to go to Sri Lanka. Their project aimed at developing literacy through drama. They made a beautiful website called sharing voices where they – amongst others – show video’s of their work in practice. They told me they will go back next year, so definitely a website to keep in your bookmarks!

My friends from the States are involved in different interesting projects. Dear Alyssa will bring her prison experience from her company in Chicago to the Doncaster prison, where she will run a dramaproject. She won’t be alone; Lauren from North Carolina is running this project with her. Also, Alyssa has started this Webpresence course at Central, and she’s updating her presence with her personal blog called bees and cellphones.

Then there is Chelsea, allll the way from San Francisco, running a project in Kenia soon with an organization called Flying Kites. Her aim is to work for six weeks in an orphanage on including drama, music and movement into the curriculum. As mentioned before, Lauren can be found in prison this term, collaborating with Alyssa in Doncaster. Apart from that, she’s involved in an interesting placement at the Young Vic Theatre and in the rest of her time she is devising a play with young adults at the Hampstead Theatre.

The best from Utah, the wonderful Jamie, is working on self-esteem and confidence in a secondary girls school in London and she is following London Bubble’s project called Speech Bubbles in primary schools, designed for children in Keystage 1 to develop their Speaking, Listening and Attention skills through storytelling and drama. Apart from that she is running a Women’s Drama Group for women affected by substance misuse at the Outside Edge Theatre Company. She is running and co-facilitating this group on the Thursday night’s with me.

If we look at our Asian delegation, Karmun from Singapore is off to India soon. I’m not sure about her exact work there, and this is partly because I think she will have to improvise a lot on the spot. Watching her improvise and perform in the last 8 months in class convinces me that she will manage this perfectly. My other two Asian friends, Eiko and Terrence are on placements with Rainbow Theatre Group (working with children with SEN) and Graeae. In one of my previous posts you can read more about Graeae and their work.

Someone I got to know quite well from facilitating workshops together on different occasions is Sarah. She’s worked for a longer time at the Outside Edge Theatre Company and co-devised the performance “Stand Still and Look Pretty”. Now she’s back in her hometown Dublin, where several projects will find their kick off soon.

My dear friend Natascha (or actually her name is Natasha but I like to spell it the Dutch way…) headed off to Mexico D.C. this week to work in cooperation with Casa Alianza in getting street children engaged in theatre. Her work can soon be followed on her website called theatre through play. Another one for the bookmarks!

Csilla is also setting out on a long journey: she will be teaching English using drama in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Very brave if you ask me, but luckily she knows Rio de Janeiro already from previous travels.

And then there is Reka. She has traveled around the world as a clown doctor. Now she’s left for Ecuador / at the border of Colombia to work in cooperation with a local NGO to support young adult immigrants through theatre.

Staying in London are the boys from the course, Luke, Rich and Tim. Luke is developing his own theatre company called Angry Young Men, and he is bringing their production called “Lost in Mozart” to Edinburgh this summer. I will not explain anything; just watch this amazing trailer (and go see it if you can!):

Lost in Mozart

In the same area as where the script from Lost in Mozart is based, South Kilburn, Rich is devising a play with the local young adults there. This means he is in the local youth centre on a regular basis, building a group and devising/ writing a play. To gain inspiration he follows the course “Writing with communities” at Central, together with me, Kate, Madelaine and Eiko. Apart from that, he won a Student Innovation Scheme from Central to realize his project combining theatre and football.

Working on his online presence together with Alyssa is the oldest and wisest man on the course, Tim. Apart from his current journey into the world wide web, he is bringing applied theatre practices to primary and secondary schools. He will be working there as a drama teacher this term and I can tell from working with him on a research project last term that children are blessed with such an amazing teacher. Once his blog is from his web presence course is online I will link it here.

My dear friend Rose is working on the Old Vic’s new community musical called “Epidemic”. This musical is surrounding the issues of health. The Old Vic is running free Epidemic Workshops throughout London to hear different voices about health. The workshops are still running and free, if you’d like to join one check their website.

And then there are two girls I’m working with this term, Lisa and Madelaine. First Lisa. Her face makes you smile immediately. Apart from this natural glow, she’s facilitating workshops at Outside Edge, both on the Tuesday and the Thursday night. On Thursday she’s working in Kent, devising a  play called “The Sky’s The Limit”.  The Tuesday night we’ve run together so far. As mentioned before, they just finished their first play called “Stand Still and Look Pretty” and are now starting to devise “Substance: the Musical”…

Apart from that, she will run a prison project in HMYOI Feltham (young offendors), with Madelaine and myself. Because of confidentiality, I can’t share anything else about this project, apart from the fact that it will be a great success!

Also involved on a part-time basis on the course is Kati. She just finished performing her one women show called “Wash-a-bye-baby. A physical comedy about infanticide” in Camden People’s Theatre.

Last but not least is the brains/collective memory of our group: the wonderful Kate. She always knows everything about our field, which is amazing (“Ask Kate” is what we tend to say). She is following Writing with Communities (with Rich, Madelaine, Eiko and myself) and she’s involved in a very exciting placement here in London, which is still in it’s initial phase and because of confidentiality I can’t say more about it.

And what about me?

As mentioned above, I’ve been getting this Women’s Drama Group up on it’s feet (starting with 0 participants in week 1, we were with 8 women last Thursday!) and have been involved with the creation and facilitation of several workshops in different community settings, such as a Drama Workshop Facilitation course. Also, I’m going into prison soon (and hopefully leave at the end of the day ). In the meantime, I’m learning from and enjoying the course Sara Clifford is offering us about writing.

Dear MA Applied Threatre group 2010-2011, wherever you are at the moment: LOT’S OF LUCK and thank you so much for your support and all the fun times we spent together. I think we can all be very proud of us!!

Also, perhaps this is the place to thank Selina Busby, our course manager, for her continuous support over the past months.

p.s. @ all my classmates: let me know if anything is missing or not entirely right by either leaving a comment below or by sending me an email!

Defining the community

To gather a diverse group of people in a community, around a common interest or locality (idea comes from Kershaw 1992) and to let them share their thoughts and feelings leading in some cases towards a performance is never a neutral process. There is no such thing as “performance neutrality” as Schechner (2002:2) calls it. By defining who is included in the community, we immediately define who is excluded from it.

I encounterd this in my own practice: do you say “NO” to a participant showing up at your workshop because he or she does not fully represent your target group profile? This participant has not experienced the same issues as the workshop is originally designed for, such as homelessness, migration, drug/alcohol addiction or mental health issues? But this participant is living locally, and expresses the feeling that “something beautiful and strong is happening here, where I’d like to be part of…”

Stigmatizing the community

Another dilemma I’ve encountered is that we must be aware of the effect of our own point of view, our own historical background, our own ‘stances in relation to the positions of others’ (Schechner, 2002:2). All the choices we make as practitioners of applied theatre, may be stigmatizing for the performers or community members, fixing them to identities that do not represent them fully.

So should we give up our aim to apply theatre, should we stop believing that the practice of theatre must and will benefit individuals and communities?

Changing the community

Theatre with communities or community performances can indeed empower people, in varied ways. I’ve seen many examples of performances where people from a certain community were given a voice or even better: where they found their voice. Some examples are: Or Am I alone (Cardboard Citizens, working with homeless people), Stand Still and Look Pretty (Outside Edge Theatre Company, working with people affected by drug and alochol addiction) and How I became an asylum seeker (Women Asylum Seeking Together /Lydia Besong). Examples of performances where voices are heard that are not part of the dominant discourse, or not even valid in our society. Every time a stage is offered to the voiceless I find it results in an extremely powerful and genuine performance.

I even think theatre or a performance could offer a possible shift in the identity of a community. A great example is given by Helen Nicholson, a famous professor in applied theatre at Royal Holloway University, in her book Applied Drama, the gift of theatre. She talks about a play with refugee women, where they are not only refugees. Drama and performance, she explains, is an excellent means to explore a diversity of identities in one community,

“It was the act of performing herself as a refugee that also enabled her to step outside this categorisation of her identity” (Nicholson 2005:97).

We as practitioners of applied theatre can help the members of the community to express themselves in such a way that the I that is performing can also be someone else. In the example of the refugees the play shows both ‘the past identity as (…) a refugee’, as the ‘present identity as storyteller and performer’ (Nicholson 2005:97).

What do you think?

I’m very curious to find out how other Applied Theatre practicioners – or other professionals in their work – view this. What dilemma’s do you encounter in your practice and how do you deal with them? How do you define your target group, whilst making sure you’re not excluding people? Have you ever felt your work was stigmatizing? And have you ever experienced change within the communities you’ve worked with?

If you feel like, feel free to leave your thoughts below. I’d love to hear and learn from you!

References:

• Kershaw, B. (1992). “The politics of performance. Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention.” New York: Routledge.
• Nicholson, H. (2005) “Applied Drama. The gift of theatre.” Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Schechner, R. (2002) “Performance Studies: an Introduction.” London: Routledge.

Pictures by Pepperazzi, Referend Pain on Flickr and Suzan Leydesdorff

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 challenges our rapidly changing and increasingly complex world puts us at? (Robinson 2001).

According to Robinson (and many others) our children enter a labour market where de-standardisation of the labour market has made lifelong employment exceptional and new skills essential. These skills are typical soft skills such as communication, influencing, teamwork and presentation. We need young people that possess these skills and know how to cope in a creative way with our modern world and all its challenges. We need an educational system that helps us ‘to come into terms with the world around us’ (Lammy 2008).

At the beginning of 2011, however, we see a tendency in both UK as continental Europe to more traditional, core based learning The educational sector is undergoing severe cuts and new conservative coalitions want to go back to basics in education (eg. reading, writing, arithmetic’s, and history). A clear preference in the governmental policies is visible to a more ‘utilitarian’ approach on education over a creative one (Fleming 2010:18). Early 2011, the very subjects of arts and creativity in education are seen as ‘non-intellectual activities’ (Robinson in Fleming 2010:33). They have lost their popularity both in government and educational decision makers, leading to severe cuts in creativity programs in education and arts in general.

Creative learning in practice: my own experience

From my own practice I will discuss two creative learning classes at two primary schools in London: a numeracy and a literacy class.

Numeracy

At a primary school in South-East London, I experienced the use of creativity and drama as a means to bring the subject of mathematics alive. Starting early in the morning with a year 4 group, we found ourselves after ten minutes on a Roman market, where the children (in role) were buying and selling as a team, with special offers and half price sale, using a special Roman currency called “Dinari”. After each round of selling and buying the “Empiror” (teacher in role) inspected the shops and discussed with the children how much profit they had made. As an introduction to the market we talked with the children about the concept of shopping, connecting the experience of the Roman market to the children’s everyday experience. All together the Roman market class offered the children a kinaesthetic experience to mathematics: they were up on their feet buying, selling, calculating, adding, subtracting, etc., in a very spontaneous and natural way.

The most important aspect of this creative learning class for me was that the children were learning in a playful way about an unpopular subject such as mathematics, while at the same time they learned about Roman history, about the basics of economics and about social skills, such as teamwork and communication. The physical experience, combined with the teamwork and the competition between the teams, had the children forget they were in fact doing mathematics.

Literacy

At another primary school in South-London, I observed the use of creative learning in the year 4 class of the creative arts teacher. This school is known for its use of creativity in learning and has a creative arts teacher in their staff. The class took place just before Guy Fawkes Day. The children worked on a poem about Bonfire and Fireworks in the class.

The children were challenged in different ways to find inspiration to write their poems. The teacher used a variety of learning styles, including visual, logical, musical, spatial and bodily-kinaesthetic ways to explore the concept of Guy Fawkes and poetry. This teaching style is based on the multiple-intelligence theory of Howard Gardner (1983), inviting the children to use their brains in different ways. For instance, the children watched pictures of fireworks, made a conscience alley of the sounds of fireworks and read a poem about flowers to analyse different ways to verbalise their inspiration.

In this specific example, I appreciated the way in which the teacher made the class exciting, fun and surprising – and so did the children. One minute we were discussing poetry and the next we were up on our feet making firework-sounds. All through the class the teacher used positive affirmation and dramatized his questions when they were not understood (in role as Guy Fawkes) and took time to reflect on what the children had just learned.

When I stayed in the class after the creative arts teacher had left, I could witness the change when the normal class teacher was back in charge. The teacher approached one of the children next to me. He had worked very hard during the class, but had some difficulties to focus and write all his ideas down. The class teacher immediately commented on the work he had done so far, noting especially his poor handwriting and downsizing his achievements so far. You could literally feel the energy pouring away from him, when the class teacher said to him “he was not achieving as he should on year 4 level!”. In this situation I clearly observed the conflict between the exceptional use of creative learning and the pressure to achieve according to standardized results, as defined in the UK by the National Curriculum.

The importance of creative learning in practice

In the mathematics class in the primary school in London, the most important benefit was that the children were invited to take risks. Fleming et al. (2004:182) support this idea when they mention that the creative way of learning helps children to ‘generate ideas without worrying too much initially about sense or being right or wrong.’

In the literacy class, the most important benefit was that children learned to use their imagination before setting themselves down to writing;

“asking children to write a poem right away in their best handwriting can destroy the spontaneity they need in the initial phase of generating ideas” NACCCE report (1999:35).

Both examples show how using creativity in the classroom enhances the acquirement of important skills like taking risks and using one’s imagination. These skills are of utmost importance in today’s society. Our children grow up to live and work in a ‘progressive creative economy’ (Sefton-Green 2008:24). A workforce is needed with employees that dare to take risks, dare to innovate and know how to use their imagination. These are exactly the skills taught and learned through creative learning.

Facing the coming cuts in education, we can only hope creativity in education, or creative learning, will stay accessible for all and not only for the wealthy and happy few of our future generation.

Many thanks to the organisations that introduced me to the primary schools. They will remain unnamed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

References

• Fleming, M., Merrel, C. and Tymms, P. (2004) ‘The impact of drama on pupils’ language, mathematics, and attitude in two primary schools’, Research in Drama Education, Vol. 9, No. 2: 177-197.
• Fleming, M. (2010) Arts in education and creativity: a literature review – 2^nd Edition, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Arts Council England / Creativity, Culture and Education.
• Gardner, H. (1983) Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, New York, Basic Books.
• Lammy, D. (2008) Soft Skills Deliver Hard Results, London, PWC Embankment Palace, 29.04.2008.
• National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) (1999) All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report), Suffolk, Department for Education and Employment Publications.
• Robinson, K. (2001) Out of our minds. Learning to be creative, West Sussex, Capstone Publishing Limited.
• Sefton-Green, J. (2008) ‘From Learning to Creative Learning: concepts and traditions’ in Sefton-Green, J. (ed) Creative Learning, London, Arts Council England: 15-27.

Pictures by Pinksherbet and SherleydeJong on Flickr.

]]> http://applieddrama.com/2011/02/creativity-in-education-examples-from-my-own-practice/feed/ 1 http://applieddrama.com/2010/12/drama-and-education-how-drama-can-realize-participatory-and-engaged-learning-%e2%80%93-part-2/ http://applieddrama.com/2010/12/drama-and-education-how-drama-can-realize-participatory-and-engaged-learning-%e2%80%93-part-2/#comments Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:30:38 +0000 Suzan Leydesdorff http://applieddrama.com/?p=323 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 using drama in education increases our communication skills, interpersonal, inter-cultural, social and civic competences, our entrepreneurship and our capacity in cultural expression. These competences are also known as five of the eight Lisbon Key Competences in Education. Moreover, the practice of educational theatre and drama on itself (not necessarily as a means to learning) helps us to understand “what it is to be human” in general (EU DICE report: 2010: 13).

Learning and teaching: how do your participants learn?

In the past 10 weeks of this first term the same question has been asked over and over again in our Pedagogies course: How do you make sure the participants of your workshop, or your students, once they have left the room, have learned? And how do you, as a facilitator, know?

Last Thursday and Friday we shared a Drama Workshop, a ‘demonstration’ Drama Workshop that was planned and delivered by ourselves, with our peers as participants and our tutors as assessors. This was the practical assessment of the terms course on Pedagogy. My workshop was aimed at increasing different skills (like communication, expression and interaction) through drama. My target group was young children with special needs.

My classmates choose different and rather interesting methodologies and target groups, like process drama to prevent domestic violence in relationships or physical theatre to teach children at primary schools about science and in particular about the subject of electricity. Some choose the different techniques from Theatre of the Oppressed, which I have not yet explained on this website, but will definitely write about in the coming year.

During this term, my classmates and I found ourselves in a double learning loop. We were asked to reflect on our own style of teaching or facilitating, while we as students ourselves at the same time were in the middle of learning how to teach and to facilitate. Here we were constantly asked to reflect on our learning path, in order to make it a powerful one.

Examples of the use of drama to realise more engaged learning

Of course we were not alone on this path. Apart from Central’s excellent Applied Theatre staff there were many guest lectures and workshops. Too much to mention them all, but some highlights:

• Siân Morrisson from Bloom Productions explained much more about the “use of drama as a tool to develop critical and creative thinking” (see their website on Drama in the Creative Curriculum). After her workshop about Comedia Dell’Arte and teaching drama, Siân invited us to a drama class in a statutory school in North London. Here, we worked together with adolescents aged 16-18 and their teacher in a drama class. Afterwards we discussed the class and its outcomes. Most importantly, she taught me to think of the use of “skills based drama” as a means to teach essential skills to students.

• Theater group “Dante or Die” impressed me with their physical theatre workshop on medication and illness, inspired by the exposition in the British Museum Cradle to Grave – showing a lifetime supply of prescribed drugs -. They aim this workshop at intergenerational target-groups, meaning young and old people explore together what it means to be sick, to have injuries and to take medications. This workshop showed me how important it is to physically experience a situation, instead of rational analyzing (“I have a headache so I take a pain killer”). Moreover, their workshop makes you think off the medicine you take, your personal sickness history and looks at health and sickness from an integral perspective, rather than distancing the mind from the body.

• Tony Coult from Rivercross brought Edward Bond to my attention. Tony is a famous applied drama practitioner with an impressive CV. Rivercross is one of his current projects, where he works on an original TV soap-drama series devised and created by young people with mental health issues, hospitalized in sometimes emergency situations in a hospital here in London.
  Edward Bond is a rather controversial theatre play writer, who always emphasizes the importance of drama and imagination. Our sence of justice, according to Bond, comes from our imagination, since imagination is our ability to create. He takes it a step further when he states that to imagine something new is the essential evolutionary tool of human beings. Drama to Bond, and the use of our imagination in particular, is at the centre of everything we do. Tony paraphrased this importance of imagination in learning in his memo to us,

“The way we learn is by reaching up to what we don’t know, what we don’t understand, what we find difficult, or sometimes scary. In that effort, we inevitably have to engage the Imagination, that evolutionary tool at the heart of being human.”

• We’ve been invited to different Theatre in Education performances. One of those was the Raft of the Medusa by the theatre-company Blah blah blah. This participatory performance showed how you can bring history alive in the classroom. We were invited on the journey of the raft of the Medusa (the Medusa ran aground at the coast of Mauritania, were 15 people of the 147 people on the raft survived and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, cannibalism and madness, later portrayed by the French painter Théodore Géricault). Going on this journey together with Blahs actors, made me physically experience how history took place in the Gulf of Mauritania, all the way back in July 1816. A lesson in history I will not soon forget!

To conclude: what have I learned from this Pedagogies unit?

Closing the term, closing the year, closing ‘London Life part 1’. What have I learned? There are three main conclusions I will always think of in all my future classes or workshops. I will from now on always try:

1. to focus on the importance of knowing your students in advance: who are they? What’s their background? What do they bring to the class?
2. to think of the objectives of working with them and to define these: what do you want them to learn? How do you know they’ve learned that?
3. to think of different ways people learn and to include these in a workshop. Here it is important to offer different learning styles, and include for instance creative, evaluative, analytic, applied, understanding and remembering learning styles (this order of learning styles comes from Siân Morrisson, but you can also look at the multiple intelligence theory by Howard Gardner (1983)). We all have different ways to understand and internalize information. A good drama teacher accommodates these different learning styles by offering different activities.

My lessons described above are learned for me for life, and I’m happy to share them with you. If you feel like anything missing or would like to add something, please do leave a suggestion or a comment below.

Let’s close for now with an old Chinese Proverb:

“Tell me and I’ll forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I’ll understand.”

Enjoy your Christmas and have a wonderful 2011!

References:

• Coult, T. (2010) Memo: to the Applied Drama students from last Friday, nov.19. Unpublished memo.
• Gardner, H. (1983) Multiple Intelligences: The Theory In Practice. New York: Basic Books.
• Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences (DICE) (2010). The Dice has been cast. A DICE resource research findings and recommendations on educational theatre and drama.
• Hall, S. (1992) ‘The question of cultural Identity’, In: Modernity and its Future (Understanding Modern Societies). Cambridge, Open University.
• Robinson, K. (2001) Out of our minds, learning to be creative. West-Sussex: Capstone Publishing Limited.

Photos by Suzan Leydesdorff and rubberpaw and Oscar D. on Flickr.