Interrogating the value of theatre-based methodologies as a research tool for addressing the effects of violence on young people's education pathways

Lead Research Organisation: University of Leeds
Department Name: Politics and International Studies

Abstract

Overview
Brazil faces excessively high rates of violence, with homicide rates similar to conflict zones. These extreme rates of violence impact on everyday interactions and relations, and on all public institutions, including schools. This network therefore explores how violence restricts education pathways/access, in ways that reflect localised patterns of inequality, such as gender, race, class, and sexualities. Members share a concern for the emotional and physical well-being of young people affected by extreme levels of everyday violence, and a curiosity in the potential role of theatre methods in deepening our understanding of how people live with exposure to everyday violence. The network will incorporate a pilot study in a high school in North East Brazil, where violence rates are exceptionally high, in order to focus and deepen the discussion on the value of using applied-theatre methods to create safe spaces for pupils and teachers to express their experiences.
This collaboration between academics and practitioners, between arts and humanities research and practice, and development and education policy and research will therefore road-test and refine a theatre-based model for researching everyday violence as an urgent and persistent challenge.

The issue
Latin America has the highest homicide rates in the world for non-conflict zones, which are focused primarily in cities. High levels of interpersonal violence go largely unreported, and rates of violence against women are high. Different groups of people face different sorts of threats and levels of vulnerability. Young people have to deal with the fear, threat and reality of violence, in the home, at school, on the street, and in their relationships with authorities.
Evidence suggests that all forms of violence have negative consequences for educational experience, but also negative school experiences are an indicator for future involvement in violent crime. This multidirectional relationship between violence and education, as well as the disengagement this can produce among teachers, is an issue in need of urgent responses.

Why theatre?
This problem emphasises the need to foster creative and safe spaces that allow young people to express emotions, bodily responses, and social practices that can otherwise get missed in the precarious environment they inhabit. The arts have a long tradition of working for non violence and exploring the ways in which people are impacted by politics, power and discrimination. Moreover, there is a parallel between the expressive use of the body in theatre-based activities, and the body as the target of violence. This convergence offers a creative route for understanding the way people experience violence, physically and emotionally.

Activities and outcomes
This work will provide methodological innovation, and fresh insights into the impacts of violence on education. The network will come together to discuss plan, deliver and evaluate a pilot, exploring the value of theatre-based approaches as a research methodology. In particular, the network is interested in unpacking the precise insights produced by theatre methods, and their suitability for investigating such a sensitive and complex topic.
The network aims to produce learning that can be shared with professionals and practitioners in the worlds of policy and practice in addressing the impact of the protracted crisis of everyday violence on young people's (YP) education pathways. Secondly, the network will develop a research proposal to build on the knowledge and practices developed, to explore the potential use of theatre approaches in other settings, and the potential of these methodological tools to function not only as tools for research, but also to provide future solutions to these issues.

Planned Impact

This network is built on the collaboration between UK and Brazilian academics, practitioners and partners. It has the potential to engage and benefit both direct and indirect participants, stakeholders, and wider society.

The young people (YP) and teachers involved in the pilot will directly benefit through their engagement in reflexive activity. This practice will enhance their communication and self-expression skills, which has the potential to help mitigate the effects of exposure to violence on their education pathways. Teachers will enhance their skills set, becoming familiar with theatre-based techniques for dealing with the reality of violence, as well as benefiting from reflection on their own experiences and affective skills. YP and staff will be invited to participate in a Youth and a Staff Forum respectively, which will feed into and shape the network agenda, activities and findings. YP's families and social networks will be invited to attend performances and engage with printed and online materials, therefore learning about the process and its outcomes.

Through our institutional partners and collaborators, we will invite relevant professionals, policy makers and decision makers from within the education sector in Recife and beyond. They will be invited to the network meetings, and on-going engagement will be actively encouraged though the use of jiscmail. This email list will provide space for debate and queries, and to share network developments and invitations to events. This will include an end-of-project report to reflect on findings and outline next steps for the network. These institutional stakeholders will benefit from the learning that emerges from the pilot, from new connections with actors from different sectors working on common issues, and the potential for further collaboration to develop across the network.

Institutions and key players at national, international and global levels will be targeted through online dissemination and efforts to elicit discussion through blogs and jiscmail, raising awareness about the potential contribution of theatre methods in this area. Our network partners and key participants have committed to acting as ambassadors within their own areas, reaching a wide audience by circulating updates among their partners and affiliations and inviting their contributions.

CESeC and Fundaj's extensive experience of outreach and impact activities provides institutional and political weight for approaching stakeholders and in preparing the ground for follow-on work. These include, the Ministry of Education of Brazil-Secretariat of Primary Education; Estrado Network-Latin-American Network of Studies on Teaching Work; State of Pernambuco Secretariat for Education; Sintepe-Union of Workers in Education in Pernambuco; UNDP; Brazil's National Secretariats of Public Security, Justice, Women's Policies, and Human Rights; Brazilian Forum of Public Security; and Association for Prison Reform.

The Centre for the Study of Violence from the University of São Paulo (NEV) is a key participant, bringing further crucial expertise and stakeholder links. NEV is a Research, Innovation and Diffusion of Knowledge Centre from FAPESP that works with Brazilian ministries and secretariats, and multilateral organisations such as the ICRC, WHO, PAHO, UNDP and the EU. A current project, the "Observatory of Human Rights in Schools" (PODHE), offers synergies in its work to promote more respectful relations between students and stimulate youth action, through educational strategies for training and monitoring rights in public schools.

Actors from civil society will include Recife Observatory (ODR), a civil society social movement focused on sustainable development for Recife. ODR offers an urban policy perspective, and connections to businesses and NGOs united by a concern for transforming Recife into a more liveable, socially just, environmentally balanced and economically sustainable city.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title Podcasts 
Description The theatre practitioners reflected on their experiences during the pilot period, picking up on themes that arose during the sessions, and dramatising some elements of these to use as the starting point for discussion between the practitioners (Fernandes and Garcia) with the research assistants (Delgado and Mariano), titled Café con Afeto (Café/Coffee with Affect). 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact These were used to inform the wider network of the progress of the pilot, to prepare them for the second networking meeting, and downloads demonstrate good engagement from wider listeners around Brazil. 
URL https://teatrocomometodo.wixsite.com/meusite/podcasts
 
Description This new international network and the original pilot aimed to collectively address the following two research objectives:
RO1. Unpack what theatre methods tell us about the embodied impacts of widespread violence on education experience and engagement.
RO2. Explore the potential value in methodological terms of these methods as a research process.

The findings can therefore be split into two areas, in line with these research objectives. First, we sought to better understand the effects of violence at micro-level, and its impact on education and, second, to explore the extent to which theatre methods can be harnessed as a reflexive research approach in its own right, with the former a measure by which we could assess the latter. In other words, if the quality of the data was robust and detailed, and if it demonstrated particular strengths or textures, then this would highlight the method's research value. The project has necessarily produced a rich resource of findings, which can be explored in future projects.

As a result of the whole research network process (including the interdisciplinary team working process, the co-production elements of the two network meetings (with all but 2 participants, Raw and Wilding, being Brazilian), as well as the pilot activity), we have a number of tentative findings, based around the quality of the data that arose from using theatre intervention methods as a research tool.

The data - in this case young people's understandings and experiences of violence - that results from this practice can be traced to the unique assemblage of practice that constitutes 'Social Theatre of the Affect, a new social intervention theatre process developed by Dr Kelly Fernandes (Fernandes 2019). The findings cannot be disentangled from the unique approach of this method, which is an interdisciplinary arts/social science 'intervention research' method, and combines theatre intervention methods, social psychology, sociology, art, political engagement, and a feminist sensibility. This cluster of processes and skills are intentional and purposeful, but are simultaneously adaptive and responsive. Therefore, not all theatre intervention methods would have the same strengths or outcomes.

The process has proven intervention value, but we investigated its potential to also generate unique research data relating to social phenomena: specifically to sensitive emotional and political dynamics (we investigated its research value in relation to understanding, more deeply than hitherto, the challenges young people experience due to living under conditions of violence). We found the potential to be clear, albeit as a very specialised and resource-intensive research method. The method comprises a unique assemblage of approaches: it is in the combination of a unique theatre approach (which explores the personal and collective emotional context for experiences of social and political phenomena, using embodied theatre techniques and collective analysis) with more established research approaches to collect the data that emerges (from qualitative social science methods: participant observation, ethnographic field notes, video-visual ethnography) that the originality lies.

The characteristics of the data relate to the characteristics of the process, which is embodied, complex, sensitive, organic and concerned with the dynamics of affect. Importantly, the researcher is located not as simply a facilitator or expert participating in, while remaining on the periphery of the research looking in, instead, in this process the researcher is embedded within and central to the research process, which results in a more powerful and complex research production process. The very nature of this complexity means that the practice is highly dependent upon the practitioners' intention and skills level and breadth, and ethical sensibility. The fact that the process is a 'lived' process, as opposed to, for example, a narrative interview method, can be catalytic for some participants. The emotions and experiences that arise, therefore, rely on the ability to understand and respond to what arises during and subsequent to the process, and ability to understanding the intersections between different issues and interactions of affect and power. In sum, in collectively producing new knowledge this method has the potential to trigger changes in how people see the world, and their role in it, and thus the practices they engage in.

The objectives of this research project demonstrated the complex interplay of different forms of violence that impact on the school space, reinforcing issues of inequality, and violence in wider society. The pilot demonstrated the rich and complex data that arises from this specific theatre process, that pays attention to affect, power, but also the ability to express embodied experiences before they have otherwise become verbalised. The complexity, as referred to above, ideally demands a much longer process to engage in, respond to, and understand the issues that arise, in such a way that would have a lasting impact on education pathways. However, what this project has shown is that working in this way has the ability to provoke enhanced reflexivity among participants, an increased sensibility to the experiences of others and the confines in which they act, an awareness of shared experiences and of the potential for collective solutions, and the desire to change their surroundings to the extent that this is structurally, socially and politically possible.

The research team will use the findings of and learnings from the project in their own particular and collaborative work going forward, as well as applying the skills developed in other related (non research) areas of their work. All participants, partners and contributors to the network are Brazilian, except Raw and Wilding, meaning that the predominant learning took place in, and will be taken forward in the work and research of practitioners, professionals and academics in country. Brazil remains a DAC country affected by high levels of inequality, poverty and insecurity, with education affected by all three issues. The issues of violence, education and security, are clearly addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals, with violence crosscutting all goals. Particularly relevant are Goal 4: targets on inclusive and non-violent learning environments; Goal 5: the elimination all forms of violence against women and girls; Goal 16: promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, and Goal 11: inclusive and safe cities (UN 2015).
Exploitation Route Anyone interested in seeing education fulfil its potential as a solution to social inequalities (UNESCO 2003), rather than as a mechanism for their reproduction, will be interested in the implications of these findings. Education and theatre practitioners in Brazil and beyond might explore further the use of creative embodied methods to create democratic spaces of change within educational settings, and how these can enhance young people's resilience to the negative impacts of violence. Education policy makers might take note of the multiple benefits of valuing and resourcing creative spaces in school settings, and see these spaces of dialogue and experience as having transformative potential for young people who are vulnerable to abuse and oppression, in contexts were levels of insecurity are persistent and high.
Researchers of education, violence and creative practice might take forward the application of this method as an ethical approach to research that does not rely on extractive methods, but builds on action research approaches to work with vulnerable groups to question dominant narratives, increase capabilities and confidence among participants, and to support action that brings positive change.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Creative Economy

Education

Government

Democracy and Justice

URL https://teatrocomometodo.wixsite.com/meusite
 
Description The network was organised around a six-week pilot project in a secondary school (aged 15-17) that ran between 4th September and 11th October 2019, sandwiched by two network meetings, the first between 31 July - 2nd August 2019, and the second between 31st October and 1st of November. In total 15 collaborators, the core research team of 4, and 2 research assistants took part in the process. Only Raw and Wilding are UK researchers, the rest of the team and network are Brazilian. The project was completed mid-February 2020 and therefore our findings and the extent of our external impact are currently under development and indicative only. This networking bid was based on the idea of collective knowledge generation and mutual training of participants, with a shared purpose of debating and evaluating the use of theatre intervention methods as a research method. At different stages of the project, the focus shifted from interdisciplinary understanding and comparing methods of data capture, to the collective analysis of sample materials and identifying future research agendas and collaborations. The strength of the data that resulted from these methods is embedded in the unique and intensive experience that is both an embodied form of participatory practice, and the inseparable nature of the findings that are organically and collectively produced. Our findings highlight the overlapping and reinforcing nature of different forms of power, oppression and violence, and value messy and complex realities, over more simplistic explanations of cause and effect. In terms of how the findings from the award are impacting the public, private or third/voluntary sectors, there are early signs of the participants in the research demonstrating agency in their school context to work and engage differently. The research team is taking the learning into their practice in other areas of their work, as described in the Engagement section. Members of the network in Brazil also demonstrated and indicated their interest in maintaining developing their acquired knowledge and skills forward, resulting already in Fernandes giving a workshop in Salvador (see engagement activity). Early stage policy discussions at the State Education Secretariat (Pernambuco, North East Brazil) to use the methods shared in the network for adding Human Rights element to the High School curriculum. This collaboration is at an early stage.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Education
Impact Types Societal

 
Description Leeds-based collaborating VCS arts organisation funded workshop delivery
Amount £400 (GBP)
Organisation Artlink West Yorkshire 
Sector Private
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2020 
End 01/2020
 
Description Travel/small personal
Amount £200 (GBP)
Organisation University of Dundee 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2020 
End 01/2020
 
Title 'Social Theatre of the Affects' as interdisciplinary arts/social science 'intervention research' method 
Description Our research project sought to interrogate the research method value of a new social intervention theatre process: 'Social Theatre of the Affects', created by Dr Kelly Fernandes. The process has proven intervention value, but we investigated its potential to also generate unique research data relating to social phenomena: specifically to sensitive, emotional and political dynamics (e.g. we investigated it's research value in relation to understanding, more deeply than hitherto, the challenges young people experience due to living under conditions of violence). We found the potential to be clear, albeit as a very specialised and resource-intensive research method. The method comprises a unique assemblage of approaches: it is in the combination of a unique theatre approach (which explores the personal and collective emotional context for experiences of social and political phenomena, using embodied theatre techniques and collective analysis) with more established research approaches to collect the data that emerges (from qualitative social science methods: participant observation, ethnographic field notes, video-visual ethnography) that the originality lies. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2020 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The social intervention theatre process 'Social Theatre of the Affects', when combined with the data capture methods we trialled, can now be considered a plausible interdisciplinary research method. 
 
Description MultiHlab, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife 
Organisation Fundação Joachim Nabuco
Country Brazil 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution Recent (Brazil/UK) Partnership: arose from previous research connections (with Raw), but developed as a new partnership for the purpose of this research grouping. The research design was collaborative, therefore all four members of the core team brought their expertise and intellectual input. The Leeds scholars (Raw and Wilding) brought their methodological expertise and intellectual contributions.
Collaborator Contribution Senior staff time: 0.2 FTE over 8 months (£6,400), 7 days of room hire (£1,750). In addition to this, what was not calculated, but was also crucial to the bid, was support staff time in relation to the logistics of the two network meetings and travel details over 8 months, technical support and use of multi-media equipment, events refreshments, and the supervisory support of two postgraduate research students to work as technicians. Partner Institution released Dr Toraci for 0.2 FTE over 8 months of teaching and professional duties to participate in the research project. Non calculated in kind support: Full support of MultiHlab team both administrative and technical to host 3-day networking events, including co-opting of post graduate students as technicians, and enabling them to accompany the project from start to finish, and participate in meetings and the network. MultiHlab team time and equipment loan over 6 weeks of pilot project workshops in local high school.
Impact Multidisciplinary
Start Year 2019
 
Description Quixote 
Organisation Quixote Project
Country Brazil 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution New (Brazil/UK) Partnership: arose during the project as we needed a new partner to replace CESeC (which withdrew due to resource issues) Training in new methods, intellectual exploration of new ideas.
Collaborator Contribution Senior staff time: Auro Lescher Senior staff member travelled to and attended 5 days of networking events in Recife as representative of collaborating organisation The fit between Quixote and the project was excellent, with Quixote bringing intellectual and practitioner insights as well as providing the needed administrative capacity (given Fundaj's institutional inability to receive or handle external funds)
Impact No impact yet. Potential for ongoing collaboration in further research - early stages
Start Year 2019
 
Description Artlink 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'Social Theatre of the Affects' Workshop delivered by Brazilian Co-I and theatre practitioner Kelly Di Bertolli, organised in collaboration with partners from previous research grant: Artlink West Yorkshire. Funded and hosted by Artlink West Yorkshire; 12 attendees from the local arts practitioner community, activist community members, third sector orgs - encouraged reflection and discussion on 'practitioner burn out'; use of theatre and performance to explore emotional contexts for practice (people have since been in touch to say the workshop inspired and/or energised them - one participant said best and most useful workshop ever attended)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.facebook.com/artlinkwy/posts/1883379111796337
 
Description Bahia Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'Social Theatre of the Affects' Workshop delivered by Brazilian Co-I and theatre practitioner Kelly Di Bertolli, organised in collaboration with project network member Licko Turle. 40 local teachers from the state of Bahia, North East Brazil participated - encouraged reflection and discussion on use of theatre and performance in different practice setting with young people in schools, specifically focussing on marginalisation and youth mental health. Now have created a whatsapp network between themselves to support continued thinking and practice.

NB All DAC participants
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Co-operative College Collaboration Meeting 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Open discussion between Fernandes and Raw with the UK Projects Manager and International Projects Manager from the Co-operative College, exploring further research and training / workshop opportunities in the area of reflective practice and in theatre methods, with a particular focus on engaging with young people from hard to reach groups. Early stages of development, but promising email exchanges since on continued interest and seeking potential funding
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Co-operative College Workshop, Manchester 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'Social Theatre of the Affects' Workshop delivered by Brazilian Co-I and theatre practitioner Kelly Di Bertolli, organised in collaboration with potential future partners/collaborators Manchester Co-operative College; 16 attendees from amongst Co-operative Movement affiliates/ community, third sector orgs - encouraged reflection and discussion on use of theatre and performance in different practice setting with young people and community groups.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.thenews.coop/145495/topic/education/co-op-college-theatre-workshop-explores-alternative-...
 
Description Dundee Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'Theatre of the Oppressed/Social Theatre of the Affects' Workshop led by Brazilian Co-I and theatre practitioner Kelly Di Bertolli, organised by Dundee-based contact, as part of an extension trip funded by University of Dundee; 20 attendees from the local council, NHS, third sector orgs - encouraged reflection and discussion on use of theatre and performance in different practice settings (people have since been in touch to say the workshop inspired and/or energised them)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Pernambuco Theatre Workshops in Schools 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Two drama-based Workshop delivered by Brazilian Co-I Viviane Toraci through her University teaching programme, using methods learnt during our project. 36 High School students (2 groups) in a school in Recife, North East Brazil attended workshops to explore how they would change their school context to improve their experience and increase their voice and influence in their school. Encouraged reflection and discussion on use of theatre and performance with young people in schools to explore sensitive emotional and social-political challenges.
Students affected change by persuading Director to alter 'league tables' approach; 2 Portuguese language teachers interested in continuing this work as a student forum in the school
NB All DAC participants
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019