Theatre, Performance and Education: The Map and The Story. Completion of monograph

Theatre that takes place in educational settings has been re-branded. Once associated with civic activism and political mobilisation, theatre is now allied to public engagement and to the leisure and creative industries. Theatre for children is thriving, recognising that children are profitable cultural consumers. Government policies that promote creative learning aim to produce a flexible workforce in a post-industrial economy, and the creative industries have become instrumental to urban regeneration. Disused factories have been turned into arts centres, galleries, museums and theatres, promoted as cultural assets in the expectation of attracting entrepreneurial investment. Furthermore, in areas of economic deprivation, participating in the arts is seen as a powerful way to heal social division. As funding has increased for education and public engagement programmes, theatre-makers have responded to this economic and social climate by developing new ways to contribute to formal education and community learning.

This study is the first to investigate the effects of a newly globalised economy and re-branded creative industries on twenty-first century theatre education. Theatre education has always been often complexly poised between different agendas, negotiating the policies of the government of the day and the social, educational and artistic aspirations of theatre-makers and educators. This remains the case in the twenty-first century, where the rapid pace of technological and social change is impacting on both education and cultural policies. Within this climate, however, significant new sources of funding for creative learning have enabled theatre practitioners to work in ways that are not only artistically innovative, but also encourage new forms of social imagining.

This is the first study to bring together educational theatre, theatre for children and the performative pedagogies associated with social regeneration. Case-studies from different parts of the world will provide examples of education and public engagement programmes that take place in theatres, in the education and cultural sectors, in the leisure, tourist and creative industries. The research will, therefore, investigate the boundaries between leisure and learning, entertainment and education. The study unites these different practices around three conceptual themes, drawn from cultural geography, of place, space and mobilities. These act as central political metaphors for our time, asking fundamental questions about the role of theatre as a creative space, as a place of learning and as theatre-making as a transgressive act of displacement. The research, which brings together the voices of participants and theatre-makers with new ways of thinking about the arts, will impact on practitioners, policy-makers and educationalists as well as theatre academics.