Networking Women's theatre in Africa
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Sch of Theatre, Perform & Cult Poli Stud
Abstract
This project aims to use a mobile application to build a virtual community consisting of female creative practitioners living in Africa and involved in poetry, play writing, and theatre making both professionally and in community projects, with researchers and other interested parties engaged with literary or gender- based research in any part of the world. The mobile app will be available to all, including feature mobile phone users, and as an on-line site to computer-users.
We envision this virtual community of women creative practitioners , theatre practitioners, researchers and other interested parties being able to 'discover' and engage with one another through this mobile app. Women creative practitioners who register will create on-line profiles with their contact details, the ability to upload playscripts, photos and links to video or youtube clips. All other users will specify their name, location and profession in order to participate in the forum discussions that are central function of this network, as well as accessing announcements and a live events listing. The forum is where we envision the collaborative analyse of issues and co-creation of knowledge regarding various concerns specific to the experiences of being contemporary African women will take place. This will involve moving away from static or macro approaches to our understanding of so-called 'African' identities that transcend the beleaguered discourses of 'gender and development' or 'empowerment'. Central to this project is the methodological approach that aims to place African-authored theories and practices related to gender, sexualities and identities at the centre of the study (see Bennett & Pereira, 2013). As such, the forum will facilitate discourse between female creative practitioners living in Africa regarding what issues related to the experiences of women in Africa need discussion, analysis and creative expression. In effect this will involve each participant both situating herself in her specific context, and then considering collective strategies for engaging in/ with these issues, as opposed to research questions being defined by what material or subjects are accessible, or pre-defined by the researcher. Conceptually then, the forums will aim to facilitate multiple levels of engagement, enabling users to interact with one another and compare methodologies, aesthetic choices and their impact on various communities in any way they choose, thereby broadening both content and the methodologies of our engagement with the emergent material.
It will also facilitate other publics, including potential audiences, critics, producers, directors, artistic/literary managers and programmers to access and engage with under-represented creative practitioners, and thereby broaden awareness of these largely unrepresented women and their work.
E1M will create the two virtual spaces, train PI and Co-I to manage and curate the user-submitted content, and report on site use, including running a regular survey related to site efficacy.
As creative practitioner, Amy Jephta will curate the sites, moderating content, co-facilitate the forum discussions, and liaise between the Women Playwrights International conference committee and organization, the University of Cape Town and the research project. She and the PI will co-edit a collection of previously unpublished plays by African female playwrights (Methuen) that emerge from this project.
As PI, Hutchison will co-facilitate the forum discussions, which will feed into her on-going research into how the aesthetics women creative practitioners in Africa are choosing to deploy in their work affect audience reception and engagement with the issues they raise. She will also participate in WPIC 2015, and co-edit African Theatre: Contemporary Women (James Currey) with African scholars Jane Plastow (University Leeds) and Christine Matzke (University Bayreuth, Germany) who will act as advisors to the project.
We envision this virtual community of women creative practitioners , theatre practitioners, researchers and other interested parties being able to 'discover' and engage with one another through this mobile app. Women creative practitioners who register will create on-line profiles with their contact details, the ability to upload playscripts, photos and links to video or youtube clips. All other users will specify their name, location and profession in order to participate in the forum discussions that are central function of this network, as well as accessing announcements and a live events listing. The forum is where we envision the collaborative analyse of issues and co-creation of knowledge regarding various concerns specific to the experiences of being contemporary African women will take place. This will involve moving away from static or macro approaches to our understanding of so-called 'African' identities that transcend the beleaguered discourses of 'gender and development' or 'empowerment'. Central to this project is the methodological approach that aims to place African-authored theories and practices related to gender, sexualities and identities at the centre of the study (see Bennett & Pereira, 2013). As such, the forum will facilitate discourse between female creative practitioners living in Africa regarding what issues related to the experiences of women in Africa need discussion, analysis and creative expression. In effect this will involve each participant both situating herself in her specific context, and then considering collective strategies for engaging in/ with these issues, as opposed to research questions being defined by what material or subjects are accessible, or pre-defined by the researcher. Conceptually then, the forums will aim to facilitate multiple levels of engagement, enabling users to interact with one another and compare methodologies, aesthetic choices and their impact on various communities in any way they choose, thereby broadening both content and the methodologies of our engagement with the emergent material.
It will also facilitate other publics, including potential audiences, critics, producers, directors, artistic/literary managers and programmers to access and engage with under-represented creative practitioners, and thereby broaden awareness of these largely unrepresented women and their work.
E1M will create the two virtual spaces, train PI and Co-I to manage and curate the user-submitted content, and report on site use, including running a regular survey related to site efficacy.
As creative practitioner, Amy Jephta will curate the sites, moderating content, co-facilitate the forum discussions, and liaise between the Women Playwrights International conference committee and organization, the University of Cape Town and the research project. She and the PI will co-edit a collection of previously unpublished plays by African female playwrights (Methuen) that emerge from this project.
As PI, Hutchison will co-facilitate the forum discussions, which will feed into her on-going research into how the aesthetics women creative practitioners in Africa are choosing to deploy in their work affect audience reception and engagement with the issues they raise. She will also participate in WPIC 2015, and co-edit African Theatre: Contemporary Women (James Currey) with African scholars Jane Plastow (University Leeds) and Christine Matzke (University Bayreuth, Germany) who will act as advisors to the project.
Planned Impact
The primary impact will be the ways in which different users are enabled to share final performances, work-in-progress, and projects with one another; and the extent to which creative practitioners and researchers test ideas and share developing research on contemporary gender issues specific to the various African contexts with each other.
We hope to measure the impact of this project by considering
(a) The number of beneficiaries, such as creative practitioners, uploading work, theatre programmers registering for access, and researchers engaged in dialogues with creative practitioners and one another, as well as being able to see other interested parties who visit the site regularly. We would hope to have between 100-300 regular participants using this site by the end of the two-year project.
(b) The number of plays/performance clips uploaded, and the geographic reach of the project. Ideally we would like to see a significant roll out from South Africa in 2015 to many more African countries. E1M currently provides platforms through Mxit to South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, with a growing base in Botswana, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Namibia, Uganda, Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Egypt, Somalia; so we anticipate that this model will be transferable to other countries and contexts.
(c) The ways in which the site has had socio-economic impact for creative practitioners - insofar as they have been able to connect with one another and researchers more easily, been able to disseminate their work, and changed/adapted their work, alongside gaining more opportunities for work.
We hope to gain this information through the mobi application's ability to report on how this site is impacting on communities. This will be achieved in two ways:
1. by evaluating the degree of participation in the monthly forums facilitated through the mobi-forum space.
2. through the system regularly (3 points in the 2-year project: at 6, 12 and 18 months) asking members to comment, survey style on the following:
- The extent to which they have been able to contextualise their own work, and later how the site has impacted on the content and visibility of their work locally, nationally and internationally.
- Whether/how this site has affected the choices they have made since becoming involved in the virtual community - for example, the themes with which they have been engaged, aesthetic choices, etc.
- What funding issues they face as creative practitioners , how they can lobby/access support.
- How they promote their work, how the site has affected this aspect of their work
- Whether the site has introduced them to the work of new creative practitioners or projects and/or functioned as a means of 'discovering' work.
- To what extent they are already connected with other creative practitioners - how wide a range, how the site has affected this? Have any real world relationships (online or in person) been fostered after originating on the platform?
- Whether/ how they are/ have been engaged with researchers, and if so, in what areas of discussion.
- Whether they find the research and/or questions engaged in by the academic sphere relevant or useful to their practice.
Another marker of impact will be how the network sustains itself beyond the two years of the project, possibly by adoption by a supporting institution, like WPIC or an academic centre in Africa.
The potential long term impact is seeing more cross-continental and internal collaborations fostered between playmakers, more productions from African women on stage/produced, increased exposure to existing groups of theatre makers and raising the profile of African women in theatre, and the academic output published and available for reference after the end of the designated period.
Another potential impact is transposing this virtual network to other academic communties/ contexts.
We hope to measure the impact of this project by considering
(a) The number of beneficiaries, such as creative practitioners, uploading work, theatre programmers registering for access, and researchers engaged in dialogues with creative practitioners and one another, as well as being able to see other interested parties who visit the site regularly. We would hope to have between 100-300 regular participants using this site by the end of the two-year project.
(b) The number of plays/performance clips uploaded, and the geographic reach of the project. Ideally we would like to see a significant roll out from South Africa in 2015 to many more African countries. E1M currently provides platforms through Mxit to South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, with a growing base in Botswana, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Namibia, Uganda, Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Egypt, Somalia; so we anticipate that this model will be transferable to other countries and contexts.
(c) The ways in which the site has had socio-economic impact for creative practitioners - insofar as they have been able to connect with one another and researchers more easily, been able to disseminate their work, and changed/adapted their work, alongside gaining more opportunities for work.
We hope to gain this information through the mobi application's ability to report on how this site is impacting on communities. This will be achieved in two ways:
1. by evaluating the degree of participation in the monthly forums facilitated through the mobi-forum space.
2. through the system regularly (3 points in the 2-year project: at 6, 12 and 18 months) asking members to comment, survey style on the following:
- The extent to which they have been able to contextualise their own work, and later how the site has impacted on the content and visibility of their work locally, nationally and internationally.
- Whether/how this site has affected the choices they have made since becoming involved in the virtual community - for example, the themes with which they have been engaged, aesthetic choices, etc.
- What funding issues they face as creative practitioners , how they can lobby/access support.
- How they promote their work, how the site has affected this aspect of their work
- Whether the site has introduced them to the work of new creative practitioners or projects and/or functioned as a means of 'discovering' work.
- To what extent they are already connected with other creative practitioners - how wide a range, how the site has affected this? Have any real world relationships (online or in person) been fostered after originating on the platform?
- Whether/ how they are/ have been engaged with researchers, and if so, in what areas of discussion.
- Whether they find the research and/or questions engaged in by the academic sphere relevant or useful to their practice.
Another marker of impact will be how the network sustains itself beyond the two years of the project, possibly by adoption by a supporting institution, like WPIC or an academic centre in Africa.
The potential long term impact is seeing more cross-continental and internal collaborations fostered between playmakers, more productions from African women on stage/produced, increased exposure to existing groups of theatre makers and raising the profile of African women in theatre, and the academic output published and available for reference after the end of the designated period.
Another potential impact is transposing this virtual network to other academic communties/ contexts.
Organisations
- University of Warwick (Lead Research Organisation)
- Academic Ideas Lab (Collaboration)
- International Centre for Women Playwrights (Collaboration)
- African Theatre Asociation (Collaboration)
- Theatre Arts Admin Collective (Collaboration)
- Playwright's Guild of Canada (Collaboration)
- Talisman Theatre Company (Collaboration)
- Every1Mobile (Collaboration, Project Partner)
Publications
Amy Jephta
(2019)
The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage
Hutchison Y
(2018)
Aesthetics of South African Women's Embodied Activism: Staging Complicity
in Contemporary Theatre Review
Hutchison Y
(2019)
Creating a network on and off-line, in and out of Africa: African Women Playwright Network
in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
Hutchison, Y
(2019)
Contemporary plays by African Women
Hutchison, Yvette
(2020)
Woza Africa: Theatre in the African Context digital toolkit
| Title | African Women Playwrights Network |
| Description | This 145 minute film outlines the African Women Playwrights Network ass a research platform that takes the form of a virtual community of female creative practitioners living in Africa or from the African diaspora from the perspective of the women & acadmics involved. Members are interested in connecting with one another, researchers and other interested parties, including potential audiences, directors, funders and artistic managers and programmers in all parts of the world to dialogue about their work. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | It has showcased th eproject and work of the women, increasing profile and alloweing the project to speak for itself, form and by its members. It has been great for use at festivals and conferences. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB1nUvVWKoY&t=1s |
| Title | Contemporary Plays by African Women |
| Description | This is a collection of new plays by women playwrights from 7 African countries, pubished by Methuen and launched in Jan 2019. Each play is forwarded by the playwright's biography, the play's production history and a brief contextualising of the work. The work includes the following: Sara Sawaari, 'Niqabi Ninja' (Egypt), Tosin Tume, 'Not That Woman' (Nigeria), Thembelilhe Moyo, 'I Want to Fly' (Zimbabwe), Adong Judith, 'Silent Voices' (Uganda), JC Niala, 'Unsettled' (Kenya), Koleka Putuma, 'Mbuzeni' (South Africa), Sophia Mempuh, 'Bonganyi' (Cameroon). |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Impact | The plays have just been released, and there has been significant impact. See article in Brittle papers, an important space to discuss African literature, 'New Collection of Plays Shines Light on African Women Playwrights', https://brittlepaper.com/2018/04/collection-contemporary-plays-african-women/. Given that very few African women playwrights are published, with the only other collection by African Women having been published in 2008, and that many plays included in curriculum were published in the 1970s or 1980s, this collection has the potential to impact hugely on secondary school and UG curriculum, and awareness of concerns and approaches to gendered issues by contmeporary African women artists. Universities in SA and Germany have prescribed the collection for UG degrees, and those in UK and USA considering prescription. |
| URL | https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/contemporary-plays-by-african-women-9781350034532/ |
| Title | Who do you think we are |
| Description | Yvette Hutchison, JC Niala and Time White (who met via awpn app) have collaborated on creating a conversational performance conceptualised to run about 30 minutes for the Tate Exchange's week of installations, conversations, and learning labs interrogating Who are we? (13-17 March). The performance installation aimed to engage and disrupt audience member's internal assumptions about how we attribute identities to people without having met them. We invited audiences to engage with the three of us through sharing images, stories and gestural repertoires we hope to playfully deconstruct first assumptions we make about people, while considering the deeper paradoxes of cross-cultural living, and how we create, perform and negotiate personal and collective identity and a sense of belonging. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | Drawing on Judith Butler's argument that identity is formed via iteration over time and is maintained through repeated performances of socially constructed characteristics and appropriate gestures and signs (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge1990), we considered how these can be (re) negotiated through stories and personal interactions between people across cultures. The questions we want to ask participants at the end are: Who are you now? Who do you think we are? In what ways, if any, has this performance changed - your sense of self and the ways in which we can embrace newcomers? We ran the performance 3 times at the Tate exchange. Twenty-three people filled out feedback forms in which they all responded positively, suggesting that the performance was excellent and enjoyable. Some responses included: 'It changed my sense of how I relate to others. I realised that I am much more sensitive to facial and bodily postures while 'deciding' about someone, even when it comes to their characteristics such as honesty, compassion, etc.', 'Makes me rethink nature of group identity and imperfect nature of any veto on membership by others', 'Made me more aware of pre-judgement and assumptions I make about people based on how they look, without knowing someone first', 'It has made me think about trying harder to be non-judgmental when meeting people for the first time & to listen to what they say rather than judging appearance.' |
| URL | http://www.whoareweproject.com/tuesday-art |
| Description | We have discovered specific ways in which artists are engaging with African feminist/ womanist issues related to legacies of colonialism/apartheid creatively and compared this to emergent African feminism/ womanism. In dialogue with specific artists we have analysed how aesthetics can impact on the artistic explorations and their reception, and suggested ways in which artists can more consciously engage aesthetics to implicate audiences in their questions. We have consciously worked with artists to develop and facilitate ways of exploring the legacies of colonialism: including how colonial racial and ethnic classifications continue to impact on identity constructions, social and gendered violence in complex ways, looking beyond symptoms or manifestations to their causes. It is worth emphasising that this site is not geared to fund productions, or to train women in app development. Primarily, its aim is to broker opportunities for artists to share and develop work, and to enable mutual engagement between communities of artists and researchers. The Co-I and PI in particular have shared research insights on gendered theory and histories that have fed into artists writing and making work. We have been able to identify trends of the ways in which participants are/ not willing to engage with ideas and one another online as opposed to face-to-face. We have noted that artists will post events or abstracts of work easily but are more hesitant to post ideas or respond to debates in public. This has foregrounded issues of safe spaces and forms for women to speak, and issues of functionality or pragmatics - we have discovered that participants are more willing to share when there is a direct benefit to themselves. Exploring ideas is a luxury when resources - time, space, funding is very limited. Questions must be grounded in very specific lived and immediate experiences. The more traditional face to face forum, where 189 filled in the registration survey, and 55 women from 8 countries attended, highlighted critical factors that impact on African women artists' development. Instead of specialists presenting research papers, this symposium was structured as a series of workshops where the researchers worked with facilitators to collaboratively explore the questions they were researching. This facilitated unexpected outcomes and the extension of the questions originally asked. It also allowed for a multi-modal methodological approach that incorporated embodied engagement, story-telling, new ways of writing and theory making, the community being in control of their own representations and knowledge, facilitated broad connections and suggesting how a community can generate solutions to their own challenges or problems. It also facilitated the sharing of knowledges between women across the continent, albeit mostly Anglophone. Language remains a challenge when working in postcolonial networks The writing workshop evidenced the need for more opportunities for African women to explore ways to approach creativity and share best practice and experiences. The playwright's panel discussed key challenges artists are facing and how they can strategize these - here funding and institutional structures were identified as major factors. It became apparent that marginalised groups need to work differently from within the current arts administrative structures, while challenging the structures, approach to what constitutes appropriate performance spaces and audiences' assumptions regarding innovative work. Artists began to understand their role in considering audiences when creating new work, and how they could learn from women in different systems and countries. The workshop on creating safe spaces for women to 'speak' was surprising because instead on focussing on trolling, or gender inequality, the workshop shifted to focus on the impact minimal resources has on artists' willingness to collaborate, which produces strength through critical mass. It also highlighted the extent of self-censorship, how individual's fear and assumptions regarding identity, the legacies of the colonial past, perceived hierarchies of success and access to resources continue to impact on collaboration in the present. Artists shared important strategies for coping with 'safety' in personal terms, for the artist herself, her processes and in relation to engaging publics with disturbing or taboo material that could result in arrest in certain contexts. The session, 'Who can speak, about what?' explored how artists engage with the ethics of telling other peoples' stories; and included an analysis of the relationship between form and affect. Through watching specific examples of work and experimenting practically artists began to understand the ethics and potential impact of using various strategies to tell their own and other peoples' stories. This was particularly significant around telling socially or politically taboo stories. Finally, we discuss how women can access festivals, and how these fora can affect the perception of women and their roles in society. What has been evidenced in this research is that the app has revealed trends, but it required face to face encounters to engage and understand them and for the participants themselves to tease out the complexities and reasons for these trends. This suggests how an innovative online research tool can successfully be used to track behavioural data, but that more traditional research methods are needed to understand and create awareness and potentially change behaviours. The app has provided the researchers with a way of accessing material ethically as it has simultaneously provided the participants ways to benefit themselves, and to control their own data, alongside the academic research project. The researchers' input has never been overt - but has impacted on the community through the questioned asked, either directly or through artistic facilitators. This feels like a movement towards a decolonising methodology for postcolonial research that does not perpetuate colonizing models of knowledge transfer or collection, but is reciprocal and alongside, rather than top-down. Huthcison has written an article analysing issue simpacting online network creation and community management. It has been important to work with the women in the development and use of the various social media platforms, as well as when defining aims, needs for upskilling and identifying different constituencies wihtin the group for peer-to-peer mentoring. When trying to engage live audiences with the new collection (from 2019), we have found the very significant role gatekeepers, both black and white play in what audiences do/ not see. The gap between policies and stated aims of diversifying programming and realities in practice. This needs challenging, and is something we plan to engage with actively with the film we are making about the project. Finally, we are challenging the paucity of access to current information on theatre in the African context via the play events and digital educational toolkit designed for secondary schools. Between 16 April 2020 and 31 December 2020, this resource was downloaded for use in 46 schools, 39 Universities, 10 public sector organisations, 6 social enterprise companies, 7 charities and 1 local authority in 25 countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. This evidences the need for such resources and how such work has broadened cultural awareness and engagement of young people globally with the African continent. |
| Exploitation Route | By engaging with the app, awpn.org, linking local artists and young people with these international online communities. Researchers could benefit from this project in understanding what is best done face-to-face as opposed to online. Until we had the symposium, the proposed connections did not form beyond investigators with specifically engaged participants, despite their historic or circumstantial links. This finding aligns with research in Indigenous methodologies for research which suggests that, 'Building networks is about building knowledge and data bases which are based on relationships and connections. Relationships are initiated on a face-to-face basis [which] is about checking out an individual's credentials, not just their political credentials but their personalities and spirit.' (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 2012:157-158). Hutchison's RiDE article tracks this in more detail. her article on aesthetics in CTR tracks the link between contemporary womanism and aesthetics in SA, the eductaional toolkit has the potential to widen engagement with diverse approaches to theatre in Africa in curriculum internationally, and the film facilitates the women speaking for themselves. We have also created a methdological video for use in International and Interdisciplinary research, see WICID. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/research/awpn/ |
| Description | This project has established an international network of African women creative practitioners from 21 countries on the African continent and in the diaspora via a bespoke online platform developed with Every1Mobile (E1M), which, once established we could migrate to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This network has enabled these creative practitioners to raise awareness of their work and increase their connections beyond specific regions, within national and international platforms. At the same time as the PI, co-I and other researchers engaged these women regarding critical factors and questions that impact their professional development. The publication of the new collection 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' (Methuen, Jan 2019) with works by women playwrights from 7 African countries, demonstrates how AWPN is amplifying the voices of this community. Its performative launch, in association with the Belgrade Black Youth Group at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry (21 February 2019), and Oxford Playhouse, as well as in South Africa as a festival of all plays alongside two developmental workshops at the Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town (25-31 March 2019) has created more visibility for contemporary African women creatives, and their work for publics, programmers and with academics. Our work with Canadian Guild of Playwrights via the CASA Award has facilitated building capacity in writers, and connections between SA and Canada, and writers and theatres. The invitation to work with the Royal African Society's Africa Writes schools' creative outreach project in London (March-July 2019) has allowed us to test the UK educational system around knowledge and desire to engage with a wider curriculum, which fed into a digital educational toolkit on Theatre in the African context created by Hutchison for secondary schools. We have seen playwrights being invited to showcase their work more widely and PI and community manager has been invited to speak about project at various symposia suggests that the network is gaining traction and international recognition. This is important as it is making overt links between the African continent and current discourses around wider participation in the arts and education by people from diverse racial, ethnic and gendered backgrounds in the UK and USA. A private donor has sponsored an African women-identifying writer-in-residence for mentoring and develioping of mid-career work at University of Warwick 2022. Details of the impact This project has impacted on a number of non-academic organisations and individuals: the digital company with whom we collaborated, over 250 women artists and more than 10 arts organisations directly. Most importantly, it has established a network of practitioners that were hard to access into a self-sufficient group. It has facilitated new creative work being published and produced both in Africa and internationally. E1M - Hutchison identified Every1Mobile (E1M) as the technical collaborator because of their multi-device platform expertise for users in Africa, who have limited access to the internet. As E1M's traditional clients tend to be NGOs who work on message-based projects, Hutchison worked with E1M to create a dialogic platform, which placed more control of the material on site in the hands of the users. Hutchison has shared her comparative analysis of how networks may be built effectively using different online and face-to-face platforms at conferences and is posting pertinent analysis on Warwick AWPN web-page. Their Business development Director reported in her testimonial letter that this collaboration has impacted E1M as follows: 'Developing the AWPN platform has enabled E1M the opportunity to work with cutting edge applied research and with best in class academic institutions. Working collaboratively with Dr Hutchison has provided the opportunity to more significantly understand the world of playwrights across Africa, better understand the demands and expectations of academic research and to improve E1M 's platform functionality. In turn, this has boosted our company's reputation by adding credibility in the academic sector by demonstrating our work which is underpinned with robust academic acumen and has added a new sector to our portfolio client base, complementing our portfolio with creative societal work interwoven with robust academic input.' (Letter, 09/2018). By February 2017, the app had 115 registered users between the ages of 17 and 69, comprising creative practitioners across 16 countries, with 6126 cumulative unique global visitors to the site. By October 2018, E1M reported over 10,000 sessions on the platform (meaning an instant where a user visited the platform for any period of time), over 22 000-page views, and 140 registered users from 21 countries. In June 2018, the network was migrated to other digital platforms (a formal Warwick web-page, Facebook, with a closed group, Twitter) that were more financially sustainable. The Facebook site currently has +500 followers, and it is growing on a weekly basis. This network has empowered African women creative practitioners to develop and transform their professional practices by networking, publishing and brokering performances of their work, The impact has been evident both online and in face-to face engagements of the network as the research team have used online fora, symposium and other events to pose questions based on our gender research to provoke discussion with and among artists on the network. This has impacted on ways in which the African women conceptualise work, collaborate and engage with structures in their countries - like venues that programme work, funders and festival organisers - that enable more cultural production and greater visibility. Ithas also enabled artists to reflect on their practice through the process of reciprocal knowledge exchange; after the publication of one article (CTR, 2018) one artist responded: 'I got the paper I thought it was fantastic It is so helpful. It's like an evaluation of years of work.' These results have come from combining on-line networking with facilitating embodied community engagements - first via the first symposium ever held for African women creative practitioners in Africa; in South Africa in 2017 where 55 women from 8 African countries and the UK came together to share discussions, skills, expertise and good practice through facilitated workshops prompted by our research. The symposium co-produced new knowledge about how to tackle issues such as infrastructures, targeting audiences and self-censorship. The Director of a SA program, who works with rural youths from a disadvantaged area and who presented work at the symposium, said, 'this weekend's symposium was a truly inspirational experience for all of us, particularly for the youth company members. These kinds of engagements tangibly contribute towards our growth as individuals and as an organisation.' Each workshop provided a structured space in which the participants began to strategize change. We reached out to a diverse range of women, from local communities in SA, nationally and internationally. Feedback from participants suggested that they had formed new awareness's around 'how issues of social and political dynamics function', about how to have 'uneasy conversations' about 'access to state-sponsored institutions'. Collaborations that have come out of these workshops include a Ugandan artist taking work to Zimbabwe; a Kenyan being invited to take work and lecture UGs at a South African university; a Cameroonian and South African company taking collaborative work to festivals in SA, Cameroon; and Angola. Then in local and regional workshops that followed this model, and in performance events. The publication of several plays and 2 journal articles with women from the network, facilitated via Dr Hutchison, who was able to provide expert commentary on the development of the writing to enable them to publish their critical and creative work. These are important outcomes given the significant imbalance in work being published and/ or programmed in mainstream fora in Africa. For example, the plays that the research team have developed with 7 artists from AWPN was published as 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' (Methuen, Jan 2019), have been described by Brittle Paper (a website dedicated to African literary culture) as "addressing an unfortunate gap in the publishing industry. Aside from the series of play collections edited by Kathy A. Perkins, plays by African women are not being published or anthologized as much as they should be. 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' is, thus, a significant step in the direction of changing that by giving readers and theaters [sic] all over the world better access to plays by African women playwrights." This is thus a seminal moment in marking a shift in scholarship and theatre production, which to date is limited to a relatively small number of plays by African women from the twentieth century. results are seen as works form this colletcion, like JC Niala's play 'Unsettled' was shortlisted for the Unsettled is now on the shortlist the Alfred Fagon Award in 2020 for best Black British Playwright, and other womens' work has been short-listed for other awards - showing how their visibility hasincreased. Dr Deidre Osborne, of Goldsmith's, University of London, and editor of the first 'Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literatur'e (1945-2010), has said, 'What a wonderful initiative the network is and the forthcoming collection of plays' (email 06/07/2018), and Catherine Cole, Professor of Drama and Dean of the Arts University of Washington, says 'The African Women' Playwrights Network leverages this [social media] power in exciting and ground-breaking ways. This community transcends national boundaries and provides real-time opportunities for female creative practitioners to form bonds, discover opportunities, and amplify the impact and volume of their artistic work." (email, 20/08/18). An artist commented on the vital, personal impact the network had made to her: 'The work the AWPN is doing is very important Even more important for me than that, sometimes, as a women, even as an independent, empowered, working class woman, there are certain moments you doubt what you are doing, you question what you're doing, you wonder if its making any difference and being able to have access, to get out of your space and meet other women who are doing the same sort of work that you're doing is very encouraging. It lets you know that it's not in vein(sic) and that all the big change does not necessarily need to happen at once. When you have access to these other women, and somebody saying I read this play of yours and it changed my life, or it made me want to become a writer, or it gave me courage to know that I'm on the right track, it really does help a lot to encourage us, to push us, to make us continue with the journey and do the work that needs to be done. Otherwise we all get lost in our little world and feel small, and feel scared, and feel like we're not making any difference.' Thus, the project has also broadened cultural understanding of social concerns in Africa and beyond. At the various launches of the plays, with a festival staging all 7 plays in Cape Town, and sections performed by the Belgrade Black Youth Group at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and Oxford Playhouse, UK more audiences have engaged with this work. Some feedback includes comments such as: "Just how important this work is, more women sharing diverse stories, to educate us, to make us laugh, to help us heal!" (Oxford Playhouse); "I'll keep thinking about how powerful theatre is in raising difficult issues and making people talk about them" (Belgrade Theatre); "It really showed me how powerful theatre is. I have heard and read of course about child soldiers but in that short excerpt it was really upsetting. It was so sad. So well acted and directed and written. It was very thought provoking and will stay with me for a long time." (Belgrade Theatre); "The importance of talking, sharing, strategizing that this network represents - what powerful things can emerge from a small idea. The small ideas grow and become a movement that effects change" (Oxford Playhouse). In South Africa, audiences commented on themes, being connected to artists from the wider continent, but We have also been able to increase skills of our community manager, via bespoke courses on online community management and how to resources and build the creation of an educational toolkit for secondary schools. We have also built organistaion and social media skills of the steering comminttee via external business mentoring. Programmers and creative organisations: We continue to develop relationships with theatres in Africa to encourage their support for local new work by women writers. We are using the site to disseminate information about professional opportunities for artists. Examples include: Manchester Exchange for artists (UK, 2016), the Arcola Theatre, London called for LGBTQ plays either in English translation or written in English from under-represented parts of the world for a festival in March 2018. Equity in Theatre (Canada, 2017), a four-week residency for mid-career/established African playwrights at the Camargo Foundation, France in 2018, the Arterial Network called for new designs for their logo and visual identity design for the African Culture Fund, and the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (Netherlands) has called for proposals for the Next Generation 2018, to support one-year initiatives by artists from Africa and Middle east between 15-30 years of age. Pulley & Buttonhole Theatre Company in Philadelphia, USA have accessed playwrights through the network and are programming 2 plays by a Ugandan and 1 by a Zimbabwean playwright for their 2018-2019 season. The latter playwright posted, 'Thank you so much to the network for building connections' (10/07/18); and the Talisman Theatre in Kenilworth UK has now set up an association with us, encouraging black women to share their work via this theatre's online programming. A particularly significant organisational collaboration has been established with the Playwrights Guild of Canada, who from 2017 have set up an annual 3-month residency in consultation with AWPN for a Southern African playwright. The residency has provided dramaturgical and financial support ($5000 Canadian dollars) for the development of women's playwriting in South Africa, while cultivating meaningful artistic connections between Canadian and South African creative practitioners, mentors and theatres in Canada and South Africa in a way we'd like to model for the wider continent. Also a private donor supporting a writer-in-residence at Warwick University 2022, a fetsival of new work by African women at the University of Ghana in Sept 2022, with the collabortaion fo other African universities,as well as supporting the infrastructure for a spin out. Our final narrative of impact is with the way in which we are using the network to decolonise curricula. AWPN has worked to create links with local diasporic communities to engage educators with the need and means to widen/ diversify curriculum to include African theatre. It has scoped how much is taught about Africa in UK Drama?theatre, English, History curricula, and then worked with local schools to inquire how and where they perceive cultural gaps in curricula to exist, and how the research team can assist them in addressing these gaps. In conversation with Joanna Brown, African Writes project manager for the Royal African Society's Education Programme in London, we worked with local playwrights from an African background in a secondary school in NW London to work with children to develop theatre from an African cultural perspective. AWPN community manager, JC Niala, was invited to present on the AWPN project on the 'Why African Literature Matters' panel forum at the British Library on 30 June 2018, which over 70 teachers, students, publishers and policy makers attended. We had valuable feedback on the need for our education packs for schools from teachers, and queries on how to connect with artists from publishers. Comments included, 'this session has made me think about the importance of developing projects aimed at younger students when teachers have more freedom to work beyond the limitations of curriculum', 'Considering how social media and online platforms can be used to reach young people to promote interest in African literatures', 'the importance of challenging the idea of literature = books'. We have since created a downloadable digital education toolkit form which teachers and theatre groups can draw in diversifying how they make, teach and engage with theatre from the African context; which is being used by as many UG University programs as it is by schools - suggesting the crucial need for this material, as we decolonise curricula. Dr Hutchison and community manager JC Niala have worked closely with Belgrade Theatre, particularly their Black Youth drama, in developing performance extracts from the play collection, while linking their research with local diasporic communities, exploring the relationship between universities and the city. Black and ethnic minority students from the department have included as active participants in this initiative, thus increasing their employability skills and experience. Audience members at these events commented (Coventry): I think the issues spoken about today are seriously important in our society', 'I will continue to think about how we are all responsible for the situations we see these (and other children) in', 'How powerful plays like this can be in educating and teaching life stories + history', 'an interesting theatre/academic partnership'; (Oxford): 'I was hugely struck by the diversity of the voices, experiences and heritage represented by the collection, but also the points of commonality/ connection/ shared experiences', 'We need to listen to more stories + plays + voices, talk more about death as part of life, women need a place in cultural paces - how can this be supported?', 'I will read more plays by African women'. Professors from Universities in the USA (Universities of California), Europe (Bayreuth, Germany) have adopted the new play collection into their curricula, alongside a number of South Africa universities Beyond this project, We are moving the network into a spin-out limited liability company, able to access finding and plan activities for the members of the network. With the help of Warwick University and donor funding, we are enabling the steering committee, drawn from women on the network to write the business plan and learn what is required in such a venture. This will address the sustainability of the network beyond this project. PI Hutchison and JC Niala worked on the Tate Exchange 2017 Who do you think we are program (14 March), http://www.whoareweproject.com/tuesday-art, resulting in a conversational performance installation 'Who Do You think we are' was selected and developed in collaboration with Dr Tim White (who tested the site originally) and performed for the Tate Exchange's week of installations, conversations, and learning labs interrogating 'Who are we?' (13-17 March 2017). The performance installation aimed to engage and disrupt audience member's internal assumptions about how we attribute identities to people without having met them. Drawing on Judith Butler's argument that identity is formed via iteration over time and is maintained through repeated performances of socially constructed characteristics and appropriate gestures and signs (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge1990), we explored how stripping physical markers of identity - appearance and voice affected how audiences (re) negotiated stories and personal interactions across cultures. We asked participants at the end were: 'Who are you now? Who do you think we are? In what ways, if any, has this performance changed - your sense of self and the ways in which we can embrace newcomers?' Audiences responded enthusiastically, suggesting that the performance was excellent and enjoyable, 'It changed my sense of how I relate to others. I realised that I am much more sensitive to facial and bodily postures while 'deciding' about someone, even when it comes to their characteristics such as honesty, compassion, etc.', 'Makes me rethink nature of group identity and imperfect nature of any veto on membership by others', 'Made me more aware of pre-judgement and assumptions I make about people based on how they look, without knowing someone first', 'It has made me think about trying harder to be non-judgmental when meeting people for the first time & to listen to what they say rather than judging appearance.' |
| First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic |
| Description | ON steering committee for Gender, Justice, memory project |
| Geographic Reach | Africa |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| URL | http://www.genderjusticememory.com |
| Description | Arts & Social Sciences faculties and Research & Impact Services |
| Amount | £20,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | G.HFTH.0002.EXP |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2019 |
| End | 07/2019 |
| Description | GRP Connecting Cultures |
| Amount | £780 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 41IACC00 |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2017 |
| End | 10/2017 |
| Description | Humanities research Fund |
| Amount | £1,600 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 15LNHF01 |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2017 |
| End | 10/2017 |
| Description | Impact Fund |
| Amount | £36,300 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Department | University of Warwick Research Impact Services |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | Canada |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 07/2020 |
| Description | Philanthropic giving |
| Amount | £40,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2021 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | Warwick Impact Fund |
| Amount | £8,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2016 |
| End | 07/2017 |
| Description | Warwick Ventures Ideas Fund |
| Amount | £10,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Warwick |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2018 |
| End | 07/2018 |
| Title | mobile app |
| Description | In collaboration with a mobile technology company we have developed a mobile application that is accessible to feature-phone enabled with wifi, while also functioning on smart phones and computers - that enables female artists to create profiles, upload documents, photos, films, note events and links, as well as allowing for forum interactions and for surveys & questionnaires. We have begun building a virtual community of women performance arts practitioners in Africa, who can share and communicate with one another as well as with programmers, researchers and other interested parties anywhere in the world. It is available at www.awpn.org, also at http://awpn.apps.every1mobile.net, https://www.facebook.com/pages/African-Women-Playwrights-Network/837218766368787, and https://twitter.com/awpn1 |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | We are able to access more work by new practitioners, get a sense of emergent issues, debates on identity formation and representation of women by women, and begin comparing these to comparable published work on the same material. We are also discovering community and arts based organizations and events through the application and facebook pages. In January 2016, 6 months into the project, we have 44 registered users between the ages of 22 and 69, from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, Egypt, and Zimbabwe, as well as African artists in USA, UK and Europe on fellowships/ residencies have subscribed to the site. Additionally, there have been between 129 and 407 individual unique visitors per month, +15 text abstracts have been uploaded, and 23 events have been logged. By end of February 2017 we had 115 registered users between the ages of 17 and 69 from 16 countries, with a preponderance unsurprisingly from South Africa and the UK, areas from which the site was founded and conceived. There have been 6126 cumulative unique visitors to the site by February 2017. By sept 2018, we had over 10,000 sessions on the platform (meaning an instant where a user visited the platform for any period of time), over 22,000 pages views on the platform, 140 registered users on the platform from 21 countries (see E1M summary report). This suggests a significant gap between those visiting and viewing material on the site, and those registered with profiles, uploading material and events. As one of the aims of the site is to make work available to wider publics, and programmers, work is being accessed in this way. I have had direct access requests from Manchester Exchange for artists, from Equity in Theatre and Playwrights Guild of Canada, Pulley & Button, Philadelphia requested work and have programmed 3 plays from 2 playwrights in 2019 session. We have also been able to identify trends of engagement by women - that they will post events or abstracts of work, but hesitate to post ideas or respond in public. This has foregrounded issues of safe spaces and forms for women to speak. How can this be facilitated online and in real space and time? Also, how much do women self-sensor and why? Following surveys and trends observed in the past 18 months we addressed some of these issues very successfully in a follow up symposium in real time, and adjusted the app site in response to their input - added ability for artists to add pictures, documents, links. This suggests how a innovative research tool can successfully be used to track behavioural data, and then be used alongside more traditional modes to shift awareness and behaviour. Through the app we have been able to call for and read plays in development and work with artists to develop their work. This has resulted in playwrights from 7 countries being contracted by Methuen publishers for a new collection of 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' (Jan 2019), which will be appropriate for secondary school and UG curriculum. Published paper analysing impact of this app on network creation. |
| URL | http://awpn.org |
| Title | Demographic engagement |
| Description | The way E1M have set up the app, we can see activity both on site and viewings in terms of country. This gives a sense of who is actively engaging with the forum, and who is watching. What we have seen is a huge interest from North America, Russia and Pakistan on African women's creative productions. This is unexpected and suggests the potential for different connections |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | We are considering how to engage more actively with N American colleagues. We have had a fruitful collaboration with Canada, but artists in USA have much potential too. It is worth considering other kinds of engagements with developing areas of the world. |
| Description | Academic Ideas Lab |
| Organisation | Academic Ideas Lab |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We provided the data, materials and the ACADEMIC IDEAS LAB helped us to shape the project connections and content. |
| Collaborator Contribution | AIL is making a film about the project for us, material has gone online as a 15 min stand-alone product, with two 2-minute trailers. Thsi has built great publicity for the work on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, built women artists' profiles and lalowed them to speak for themselves, back to and about the project. |
| Impact | 15 minute film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB1nUvVWKoY&t=1s |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | African Theatre Association (AfTA) |
| Organisation | African Theatre Asociation |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We have connected this research association with artists on the ground in Africa and various diasporas. Thsi is closing the gap between research and contemporary artistic practice. art |
| Collaborator Contribution | They are forming a formal association with AWPN going forward, when it becomes an organisation. This means that a member from eahc board will sit on the board of the other organistaion and support strategic activities and co-operations. |
| Impact | We will launch this affiliation at the AfTA conference in Berlin in July 2020 |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | CASA Award - AWPN & Playwright's Guild of Canada Women's Caucus |
| Organisation | Playwright's Guild of Canada |
| Department | Women's Caucus |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | We give Playwright's Guild access to artists, suggested ways to collaborate and are part of the award selection process. Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) Women's Caucus used AWPN to run an application process for their Canadian Sponsored Mentorship for Southern African Woman Playwrights not currently affiliated with a theatre or company or employed at a university. We set up a panel to select awardee, and also broker theatre in which she can return to develop her work with a driector and have it staged. The new playwright is to share her residency experience with the AWPN community via a monthly blog. We then track the impact of this project on the mentee, and other women on the site. In the first year of the 3 playwrights selected, two were from the network, Koleka Putuma, and Philisiwe Twijnstra. |
| Collaborator Contribution | PGC have secured funding to run this award from 2017-2022, CASA is funding one or more annual 3-month residencies in Canada supported financially by $5000 Canadian dollars and dramaturgically by a senior woman-identified Canadian playwright and then in South Africa by a host theatre and director to produce the new work professionally. CASA has set up the mentor for 3 months in Canada. They have created links from their site to our app/ facebook page for artists and other stake-holders to engage with our network. They also refer to the African Women Playwrights Network in their newsletters, stating that we will be working with the network in putting out the call and gathering applications for this fellowship. They financially supported ($5000) and mentor the artist/s for 3 months by senior Canadian playwrights and an extablished South African theatre maker. The aim of this is to create and cultivate meaningful artistic connections between Canadian and South African women playwrights. |
| Impact | This has cultivated meaningful artistic connections; and since the award's launch, two of the award's recipients have toured their work in Canada, one of the recipients has co-established a creative support initiative (Durban Womxn Playwrights) and one recipient has won the Distell National Playwright award, based on the script she developed during her CASA residency. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | E1M - technology development |
| Organisation | Every1mobile |
| Country | South Africa |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We have worked with E1M to develop the necessary software to create the virtual network through a mobile application. The site design required users to upload their profiles, events, which E1M had done before. However, the ability to upload extracts of work required E1M to write a new programme to support this functionality, and some others including the terms and spectrum for searching the app, for the calendar function in particular, and nuancing the functionality of different users (male/ female, African/ rest of world) which will have further commercial impact for the company. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They helped us develop the app according to our research needs initially, and are helping us nuance these during the research process. This has meant changing some functionality, building questionnaires, and also reporting on usage of the app throughout the project at specified moments. We are in discussion about extending the contract and building new fetaures. |
| Impact | Mobile application, see www.awpn,org, for the E1M reference of this site, see their web-page. Building a virtual network of African women playwrights, also programmers, as well as related events through the African continent. |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Description | Talisman Theatre |
| Organisation | Talisman Theatre Company |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We have provided new material from Black women writers to broaden and decolonising the programming of this organistaion |
| Collaborator Contribution | They helped the artist technically to work up a radio script for dissemination, raising artists' profiles |
| Impact | Production of Philisiwe Twijnstra's short story, Little Black Sandals, as a radio play, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EhLWbVgo9A; more following |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Theatre Arts Admin Collective (TAAC), Cape Town |
| Organisation | Theatre Arts Admin Collective |
| Country | South Africa |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Contributions made by our team: We facilitated the AWPN symposium at the Theatre Arts venue, and thereby brought artists together in this venue, raising its profile and highlighted its aims and objectives locally, nationally, and internationally. We structured workshops and discussion groups in such a way that artists could critically engage with their issues as contemporary female artists on a local, national and international level, and work out strategies for engaging with these practically. We suggested ways in which Theatre Arts Admin might use this network to form regional groups to lobby for funding, programming, or facilitating more connected partnerships and collaborations. First regional meetings have happened following through on this suggestion. In March 2019, TAAC will host the luanch of the Contmeporary plays by African Women with a festival of performance sor readings of all 7 plays, and two half day workshops for artists, which we have collboratively designed. Our community manager will host part of this festival. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Theatre Arts Admin Collective accessed and physically faciliated our academic engagement with creative practitioners (writers, dancers, visual artists, performance artists) from diverse cultural, social, economic backgrounds with varying degrees of skill and experience. The Director worked with us to workshop issues arising and is continuing to facilitate discussions begun at our event in February with quarterly meetings of key regional spokeswomen in situ in South Africa around issues raised by artists regarding funding, programming and general advocacy for female artists. The director has led on lobbying for change and more access for a diverse range of female artists to key festivals and venues in SA. She has also brokered arrangements for creative work from the network to be performed in SA. In March 2019, TAAC has programed staged play readings from the new collection of 7 plays in 'Contemporary Plays by African Women', published by Methuen, 2019, and two half day playwrighting developmental workshops. |
| Impact | We hosted the AWPN Symposium, "Breaking Boundaries: African Women Writing on the Edges of Race, Gender and Identity" at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town on 4 & 5 February 2017. Performances of new plays from the network, 25-31 March 2019, program, Provisional Programme (/uploads/1 /5/5/8/15582344/book_launch_provisional_programme.doc) |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | WPIC |
| Organisation | International Centre for Women Playwrights |
| Country | Global |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Amy Jephta, my co-researcher, was an advisor to the 10th Women Playwrights International Conference in Cape Town - South Africa 2015. This involved her working with the organisation to select women to present their work, organise the conference, play readings, and select individuals to sponsor for the event. We used the app to comment on artists' reactions to the work presented each day, to illustrate the forum function of the app. |
| Collaborator Contribution | WPIC gave us space during the conference to launch the app and explain the project. They also included our project in their pre-publicity material. |
| Impact | The sharing of users between WPIC and AWPN. |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Title | Mobile app for feature phones |
| Description | In collaboration with a mobile technology company we have developed a mobile application that is accessible to feature-phone enabled with wifi, while also functioning on smart phones and computers - that enables female artists to create profiles, upload documents, photos, films, note events and links, as well as allowing for forum interactions and for surveys & questionnaires. We have begun building a virtual community of women performance arts practitioners in Africa, who can share and communicate with one another as well as with programmers, researchers and other interested parties anywhere in the world. It is available at www.awpn.org, also at http://awpn.apps.every1mobile.net, https://www.facebook.com/pages/African-Women-Playwrights-Network/837218766368787, and https://twitter.com/awpn1 |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | In January 2016, 6 months into the project, 44 participants between the ages of 22 and 69 have subscribed to the site from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, Egypt, and Zimbabwe, as well as African artists in USA, UK and Europe on fellowships/ residencies. Additionally, there have been between 129 and 407 individual unique visitors per month, +15 text abstracts have been uploaded, and 23 events have been logged. This has meant that women form areas with little wifi access, and less smart phones have been able to profile their artistic work and profiles. producers and festival organizers in UK, Canada and SA have actively sought to access artists from particular countries through this project. |
| URL | http://awpn.org |
| Description | 20 min radio interview with James Sandy, Switch Radio, Tues 26 Feb, 7-8 pm, The New Curiosities Box |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is an Arts program. We discussed the AWPN project, objectives, achievements, some of the artists' work; also how the global and local art and audiences can engage one another, identity politics, etc. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.switchradio.co.uk/jamessandy |
| Description | African Women's Plays Leap Off A Global Page - Oxford Playhouse |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We launched the collection 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' at the Belgrade, which involved bringing the Black Youth Group from the Belgrade in Coventry to Oxford, accessing local respondents and hosting the launch event that saw more than 50 people debate issues raised by the play extracts, and so further awareness of African scholars and writing locally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/whats-on/all-shows/contemporary-plays-by-african-women/11997 |
| Description | Contemporary plays by African Women - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We launched the collection 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, which involved is working with the Belgrade Black Youth Group to stage extracts from 3 of the plays. This involved financial support and expertise into the group - singing sessions, directing, etc. It was multidisciplinary as it saw UG and local artists co-directing, and local activist organisations responding. We co-hosted this event that saw 120 people debate issues raised by the play extracts, and so further awareness of African writing locally, also issues of social inclusion, gendered abuse, etc. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.belgrade.co.uk/event/contemporary-plays-by-african-women |
| Description | Debating feminist perspectives on commemoration, symbolic reparation, and the arts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This event drew together artists, human rights activists, lawyers and people involved in advising on policy making on symbolic reparations form North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe to discuss issues related gender in these processes. It was th efirst of 3 events - in UK, SA, Chile where artists, academic researchers and human rights perosnnel work together to reflect on existing memory projects from a gender perspective, to analyse the meanings of gender and symbolic reparations, to investigate the presence or absence of women in commemorative projects, counter narratives, visual or oral representations of gendered memory, to highlight struggles for symbolic reparation, and to question matters of representation and voice in those struggles. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.genderjusticememory.com/debating |
| Description | Gender Recalled: Memory, Resilience and the Arts', closed workshop , King's College London, |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | My presentation sparked discussion on transitional justice, memory and issues related to the marginalisation of women. A participant from the group put me in contact with a South African social scientist working on the Marikana Massacre, with the Khulamani Support Group in Johannesburg; whcih has extended the groups we are reahcing through the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Gendered Citizenship Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This conference brought together artists, academics and policy makers to discuss issues surrounding gendered citizenship. it dealt with range of subjects, including human trafficking , homelessness, domestic workers, etc., in diverse contexts ranging from India to eastern Europe and North America. i was the only speaker on Africa and we found both connections and new questions emerging form the artists' work. We also discussed ways of sharing research and practice across the creative industries and academic contexts to address some of these issues. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | https://genderedcitizenshipandperformance.wordpress.com/events |
| Description | Interview for BBC West Midlands |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Sunday Night with Nikki (Tripper), BBC West Midlands engaged African and Caribbean communities. Discussed the relationship between global (African women) writers and local audiences; and how we engage with work that may seem far form us. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06zksz1 |
| Description | SA Festival of new plays & workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was another launch event for 'Contemporary Plays by African Women' in SA, where drama schools from the region staged in full or read 6 of the 7 new plays with an installation of production of the 7th. It changed perceptions of local audiences about plays form the wider continent and raised important social issues such as gender based violence, child soldiers, whilst also making space for the voices of African women in spaces where they have historically been excluded. Practitioners and audiences discussed how pan-African plays can break silences and become a road map for difficult conversations, a space for sharing stories and identifying shared experiences. One male respondent in South Africa, where violence against women is a major concern, said that he will continue to think about 'my role as a male in dismantling gender based violence' and 'my own socialisation into perpetuating toxic masculinity' in response to the Nigerian play 'Not That Woman'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://weekendspecial.co.za/contemporary-plays-by-african-women/ |
| Description | Symposium: Breaking Boundaries: African Women Writing on the Edges of Race, Gender and Identity |
| 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 | The objective of this event was to structure developmental exchanges that allowed our analyses of trends on the network (determined by interaction in the last year from 16+countries and the registration survey taken by 84 participants) could be communicated to the 55 artists and other stakeholders that attended from 9 countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon, UK and US). We used workshops and two performances as the basis for these discussions. We had noticed that although the registered users were happy to share new work on the site, they were more reluctant to post ideas, views or share too much on their personal profiles. Wwe wanted to analyse these reseravations with the participants and also see ghwo we could generate greater connectivity within the group. The performances included a new play by Sara Sawaari, 'Niqabi Ninja', to be published in the Methuen play collection as an outcome of the project. This play allowed us common ground to discuss form and responsibility when engaging gendered issues that relate to violence, and to often stereotypical approaches to topics like Islamic women. The second play by a rural youth group from a disadvantaged area of the W. Cape suggested how artists can work in rural areas, access and engage communities. It also allowed the 6 youths to share their personal and creative growth, and also engage them in our discussions around issues of gender and violence. The Director of the programme wrote that 'this weekend's symposium was a truly inspirational experience for all of us, particularly for the youth company members. These kinds of engagements tangibly contribute towards our growth as individuals and as an organisation.' In each workshop, we sought to highlighted a critical awareness of factors that impact on their development. These included a writing workshop - suggesting how artists can approach creativity in new ways, a playwright's panel, where we discussed the key challenges artists are facing and how they can strategize these - here funding and structures were identified as major factors, and the group began discussing ways of working differently within, but also challenging current arts administrative structures as well as space and audiences' assumptions regarding innovative work. Artists began understanding the need to seriously consider audiences when creating new work. A workshop on what is needed to create safe spaces for women to feel able to 'speak' in public for a - in which women realised how they often hesitate to collaborate because of minimal resources, but how collaboration is a key to strength. Also, how fear and assumptions regarding identity and issues regarding the legacies of the past continue to impact on collaboration in the present. We discussed 'safety' in relation to the artist herself, her processes and also in relation to engaging publics with disturbing material. The session 'Who can speak, about what?' raised issues of how to engage with the ethics of telling other peoples' stories, about form and affect. Through experimenting practically artists began to understand the impact of different strategies of telling other peoples' stories. Finally, we discuss how women can access festivals, and how these fora can affect the perception of women and their roles in society. Each workshop also provided a structured space in which the participants could began to strategize change and broker relationships. We reached out to a diverse range of women, from local communities in SA, nationally and internationally, of the 189 that registered, 55 found the resources to attend the event. Feedback from participants suggested that they had formed new awarenesses around 'how issues of social and political dynamics function', about how to have 'uneasy conversations' about 'access to state-sponsored institutions'. The youths suggested the event had given them pride in themselves and their work and encouraged them to continue working with other rural youths in this arts based practice. One respondent wrote: 'As a result of my participation at the symposium, I now view so many things in my profession differently, and I believe that the experience will make me a better theatre teacher and practitioner. On a very personal note, I learnt how to creatively go about writing a new script which borders on a very sensitive issue in my home country. This is what I consider as my highest achievement at the event. As a result of my participation at the symposium, I now view so many things in my profession differently, and I believe that the experience will make me a better theatre teacher and practitioner. On a very personal note, I learnt how to creatively go about writing a new script which borders on a very sensitive issue in my home country. This is what I consider as my highest achievement at the event. in a survey on the app following the conference, when asked: What is the one thing you have learnt from this symposium that you didn't know /were unaware of, going in? Some responses included: How to work on taboo topics, networking with other women in the arts. And above all I realised women artists go through same thing no matter the race, country or cultural background. How festivals in other countries are funded and supported. How the app works, could work. That safe spaces need to be constantly created. And that we can't rely on an experience to represent a vision. Sharing of Privileges. How to be a support system for others, and how to trust others for our safe space. I also learnt a lot about collaboration and most especially that to fail is not a crime. It's a stepping stone to knowledge. Also learnt that our worries as female Performing Artist and as a writer. About different spaces for artist that are available throughout Africa. I learned a lot about making theatre in South Africa and in a South African context, which I found really fascinating. Immediate outcomes included a UCT fellowship for a Kenyan artist, a collaboration between a Ugandan playwright and SA director, professionals sharing skills with NGOs, and a skills database being added to AWPN profiles to foster further collaborations. Megan Furniss. Dancer Mamela Regional groups have been created under specific leadership of artists in the Western Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng areas to lobby for funds, festival programming, etc. Theatre Arts Admin has suggested hosting play-readings of the 7 plays developed with the project investigators and contracted by Methuen to be read at a festival 2018 or 2019. See responses on AWPN.org, and AWPN facebook. See also http://www.meganshead.co.za/awpn-niqabi-ninja-new-stories/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://awpn.org |
| Description | Womens' Playwright International Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The WPIC (Women Playwright International Conference), which is held every two years, offered to launch our project during the conference with women playwrights from around the globe (see link for newletter for names, countries and plays presented) on 30 June 2015, at the very strat of the project. Because it was hosted in Cape Town, it set aside special support so that 20% of the delegates could be from African countries. This made the event ideal to launch this application. It allowed for face-to-face explanation of the aims and objectives and get an immediate critical mass engagement, which began the snow-balling approach for further recruitment and engagement with the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://wpic.riksteatern.se/files/2015/01/WPIC-2015-news-letter-10.pdf |