Confronting alienation: bringing theatre to 'areas of low cultural engagement'

The Leadership Fellow research focussed on campaigns and episodes in twentieth-century Britain which challenged the opposition between "politics" and "culture" as usually understood. Its impact was confined to the North West of England, and primarily museum-based. The Follow-on project delivers new UK-wide social, cultural and educational impact by recasting key elements of the research in the form of an accessible and engaging multi-media documentary play produced by the political touring theatre company Townsend Theatre Productions. The play is about the 1971-2 UCS work-in, a shipyard occupation which knowingly possessed a strong 'cultural' or performative dimension in an age of mass television. Rather than withdrawing their labour, employees facing redundancy continued to work, demonstrating their industrial creativity and imagining a workplace freed from alienation, the speed-up and the bottom line. Though some in the labour movement saw class collaboration (working for free), the work-in caught the popular imagination and was a partial victory. The proposed closures were mitigated and over six thousand skilled Clydeside jobs saved. The play retells the story of the UCS work-in in its fiftieth anniversary year, and will be performed to an estimated UK-wide audience of 10,000 people in 50 performances (2020-21) across 35 venues, including theatres, libraries and community spaces. As well as returning the dispute to its original form--it was always a type of political theatre--this project creatively 'returns' the work-in to the community that made this history. The play will twice be performed at Clydebank Town Hall (the centre of UCS operations fifty years ago) where tickets for the first performance will be free to members of the local community, thanks to a trade union subsidy. The second performance will be supplemented by a free day-school. Drawing on the PI's and TTP's links with trade councils, trade union education departments and community support groups, the event will situate the meaning of the UCS work-in in relation to contemporary debates about worklessness and automation through accessible presentations from a gender-balanced panel of former shipyard workers and their families, community activists, academic researchers, local historians and archivists. Both production and day-school will be professionally filmed and uploaded onto the websites of the theatre company and the University of Manchester, prefaced by a brief statement from the PI contextualising the production and its underpinning research. In the spirit of that original research, the project connects past and present. At a moment when the Bank of England predicts that automation will displace 15 million jobs from the British economy in the decades ahead--40% of the total labour market--the issues at stake in the UCS work-in are by no means historical. The production, day-school, films and promotional material will illustrate how the key themes of the UCS struggle--creativity, alienation, the meaning of work--shed light on contemporary debates about de-growth, precarity, joblessness, automation, Universal Basic Income and what Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams' widely-discussed book, Inventing the Future, terms 'a world without work' (2016).

The project enhances the value and benefit of AHRC-funded research beyond academia by crystallizing ideas around class, creativity, alienation, work and cultural politics developed through the original Leadership Fellowship in the form of an accessible, educational and widely-performed and filmed play. The crucial impact will be upon an audience of around 10,000 people who correspond to the 'low engagement' demographic defined by the Arts Council--living in 'parts of the country where involvement of the arts is significantly below the national average', belonging to 'segments' of the population 'not currently engaged'--who will come to see the play and be entertained, challenged and educated. DCMS indicates that the benefits of cultural participation to such audiences can include 'increased health and well-being' and 'enriched lives', what the AHRC's 'Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture' report conceptualises as 'an improved understanding of one's own life, an enhanced sense of empathy with respect to others, and an appreciation of the diversity of human experience and cultures.' In particular, the play might stimulate in audiences social, cultural and political reflection through its representation of a history of industrial creativity, community resilience and solidarity obscured by forty years of deindustrialisation and dominant political discourses which demonise economically deprived communities. The production aligns with the AHRC's emphasis on the capacity of culture to help to shape 'reflective individuals' and 'engaged citizens.' The PI's collaboration with TTP will deepen and extend these benefits for the company's present and future audiences. TTP has a strong track record in connecting with these 'areas of low engagement', its tours typically covering over 80% of the Arts Council's 100 regions of lowest engagement (2015-17 Active Lives Survey). TTP's critically acclaimed work will be improved further by the project for the benefit of these communities in terms of repertoire, writing, direction, rehearsal, movement, sound and lighting. Geographical and demographic reach will be extended, notably by enabling TTP to perform at venues across the whole of the UK, bringing its work beyond the regions covered by Arts Council England, who have provided support in the past. It will enable TTP to improve its engagement with the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing: 20% of the performances will be BSL interpreted. It will strengthen TTP's development plan, further enhancing its reputation with a wider range of funders by demonstrating its ability to build sustainable links with the university sector. It will benefit the future careers of the six members of the core production team hired for the collaboration. Clydebank Town Hall and thirty four large and small theatres, Arts Centres and venues will benefit through increased revenue (sales of tickets, merchandise, refreshments). Some venues will additionally benefit through the diversification of their usual programming. Third and heritage sector organisations will benefit through increased revenues, new visitors and raised awareness of collections, public events and volunteering opportunities. Built into the project are pathways to future impact, notably via the filming of both the play and day-school and concrete proposals to pursue the maximum dissemination of the play across different media (BBC Radio, film and television adaption, the play's publication). All of these actual and potential impacts will be gauged, captured and analysed with a view to supporting this company--with its distinct combination of artistic flair and commitment to social justice--to realise its ambition of becoming a permanent organisation, and thereby to secure a firmer future for its work in confronting 'inequality of engagement' ('Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture').