Revitalising Critical Dialogues on Community Theatre: a seminar series and national festival of community theatre.

The project is aimed at creating significant and innovative engagement and impact activities with new national audiences, following on from the activities and outputs of the AHRC-funded Fellowship "Enacting Community". The project is a collaboration between the Fellowship PI, Kerrie Schaefer, and acta Community Theatre company, a key partner whose work was documented and analysed within the Fellowship research project, and whose professionally- and publically- oriented events provided pathways for impact. acta has secured part funding (from Arts Council England) for a National Festival of Community Theatre to be held in Bristol in June 2016. acta and Schaefer aim to collaborate on producing this event and a series of (three) critical dialogues leading into it. In particular, the critical dialogue series aims to build on acta's Foundation Worker scheme targeting emerging practitioners who might be graduating/recently graduated from University although lacking practical industry/work experience. The National Festival of Community Theatre will feature performances, workshops and critical dialogues covering research themes deemed most relevant to practice concerns by acta and Schaefer. There will be a high profile opening event to the Festival with over 100 people expected to attend including community theatre practitioners and companies from Europe and the UK, students and academics, and public and private commissioners of work. The seminars and Festival will be digitally documented and a documentary film will be made available on the acta website project page.

These activities, building on established cross-sector networks and relationships, will benefit a great number of user groups, and, together with documentation of the project, will ensure longevity of the project.

Who might benefit from the Follow-On project?

There are several groups identified as potential beneficiaries from the engagement activities of the proposed project in the UK and internationally:

1. Community Theatre practitioners - experienced and emerging (including trainees).

2. Public policy makers, especially those working in the areas of arts and culture, and community.

3. The project partner, acta Community Theatre, and other community-based performance companies.

4. Community theatre participants.

5. Members of the general public, in particular community groups or community activists.

How might they benefit?

Beneficiaries 1-5 will benefit from participation and engagement in the project activities: the seminar series and national conference. The benefits for each group are expressed in terms of the following impacts:

1. Experienced community theatre practitioners will benefit from demonstrating their work and engaging in dialogue with other practitioners (including emerging ones), researchers, public policy makers and the general public about underlying philosophies, rationales, working methods and processes. Practitioners will benefit from dialogic spaces created to develop even more sophisticated collective definitions of their professional practice that they can then utilise in research, policy and practice contexts to strengthen the impact of their work. Practitioners will benefit from new ways of critically explaining what they do, its relevance and value (beyond the intrinsic or instrumental, and not reduced to the economic) to society. Practitioners will benefit from the recognition of their professionalism and expertise and the establishment of stronger mixed professional networks and events for progressing UK practice.
Emerging community theatre practitioners, trainees and HE students will benefit from engagement with experienced practitioners honestly and openly discussing and demonstrating their practice, including difficult and challenging elements of it. Students, in particular, will gain insight into some of the issues faced by practitioners in the industry.

2. Public policy makers will gain deeper insight into how community theatre practitioners define their own practices - philosophically and pragmatically - and what, essentially, drives their work. Public policy makers will benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the difference between community theatre as static, social welfare and a dynamic, democratic performance process in which participants are able to imagine and enact alternative ways of being-together. Public policy makers will thus be better placed to understand how, why and when to integrate theatre and performance into public planning processes and the value that these practices will add to that process.

3. acta Community Theatre will benefit from an enhanced profile as co-producer and host of the seminar series and national conference. Acta and other community theatre organisations will gain increased knowledge of the broad spectrum of practice in the field and be able to establish stronger networks and relationships for supporting practice. The practice field will be able to explore the possibility of (re-)convening a regular national conference to increase future knowledge and understanding of community theatre and performance.

4.Community theatre participants will benefit from engagement in professionally-oriented events in which there is space to voice their experience and demonstrate their social and cultural learning and expertise. There is great potential for participants to share knowledge, experience and expertise with members of the public who may be curious or committed to changing or celebrating their communities.

5.The general public will benefit from increased understanding of community theatre practice and being better informed about participatory processes, including difficulties and challenges.