So after many years of social-media-phobia I’ve finally been helped to conquer my demons and engage (somewhat belatedly) in the 21st century! Thanks in particular to Red Ladder’s Rod Dixon for inspiring me and to our own Annette and Anna for holding my hand!
I’m going to use this blog to talk about the research I’m doing, which is looking at ways that theatre might become a more useful tool in the social change armory. Yes, of course I understand the intrinsic importance of the arts in all our lives, and of course, I recognise how important entertainment is: both those things go without saying and I feel no need to discuss them here. What I’m interested in teasing out is the place that politics and art meet.
I think that the world we live in is inherently unjust, that corporate capitalism is a shocking disgrace, and that we’re following the neo-liberals headlong into environmental and economic catastrophe. It’s bleak. But I don’t think it’s over. I’m an eternal (if at times foolish) optimist and I don’t think we should take it lying down. Where there’s life and art there’s hope, and I think its up to all of us who think things are wrong to challenge and change them in our own ways. That was why I set Collective Encounters up in the first place, and over the last seven years I’ve witnessed real change. But this change has been individual and local, and (to use James Thompson’s words) tactical rather than strategic. And, if I’m honest, I think there are some real problems with this….
On the one hand I believe absolutely and completely in cultural entitlement for all, and the focus of my work has always been about enabling people who wouldn’t usually have access to the arts to both witness and create great theatre. I’m delighted that Arts Council England has prioritised access and reach alongside excellence and quality. I celebrate (and advocate) the increased confidence, improved skills, enhanced health, broken barriers, new thinking and healed tensions that can be stimulated by the arts, BUT ……
I also believe that over the past 15 years or so culture has become a tool of government policy; and that the social inclusion agenda is in essence a conservative means of re-integrating people (who have often opted out) into a mainstream which passively accepts inequality. This goes against the very grain of opposition that should surely underpin the work. I worry that the personal and local transformations that are undoubtedly in evidence are not affecting fundamental change, but enabling our more oppressed and disempowered citizens to cope more effectively within the current (often reprehensible) systems. I worry that the work can in fact reinforce inequality by working, as Tim Prentki says, almost exclusively with “the victims of the way the world is run rather than with those who run the world”.
So, for me, it’s become pressing to look at how theatre can have a more direct effect on political and structural change. I don’t want to make theatre or create processes that put a sticking plaster on a defunct system. I want to work towards root and branch change. So we’ve set up our research lab, and I’ve started a PhD with Manchester University, and over the next 6 years (yes, really, I said 6!) I’ll be seeking out international models of theatre for social change that have a more direct impact, and we’ll be testing them out through Collective Encounters’ practice; as well as developing our own new ways of working. Through the PhD I’ll have the space to think about the ethics and issues at play; and to reflect on our work and where it fits in the bigger picture. So a very exciting few years ahead. I think the blog will be about me sharing interesting things I’m finding out and asking questions that I’m exploring, in the hope that people other than me might be interested and (even better) may have something to say back…
