Freedom to Believe: A Theatre-in-Education Project exploring Caribbean Social and Religious Histories

Britain's longstanding colonial relationship with the Caribbean means that there is an important need for education about this aspect of our history, recognized in the National Curriculum for England. However, few research-led resources exist for teaching Caribbean history, especially for topics other than slavery. This project will work with teachers and Theatre-in-Education practitioners to create resources to stimulate teaching and learning about wider aspects of Caribbean history, as well as broader questions related to the diversity of religious practice historically and today. It draws on a previous AHRC research fellowship (Spiritual Politics in Caribbean History) which led to the publication of a monograph, The Cultural Politics of Obeah (Cambridge University Press, 2015). As part of the research for the book Diana Paton collected evidence about hundreds of cases of prosecution for religious crimes in the Caribbean. These crimes included obeah (a form of spiritual healing often referred to as witchcraft) and contravention of Trinidad's Shouter Prohibition Ordinance, which prohibited the worship of those affiliated with the Spiritual Baptist Church. Paton analysed the case records collected as part of the project in her monograph; they will now be made available to a wider audience, along with rich material contained in the records that could not be included in the book. The case records include many human stories that reveal aspects of Caribbean history, society and culture that are rarely accessible to teachers, students, or the wider interested public. This project will use the methods of Theatre-in-Education to make them accessible to students across the secondary curriculum, especially in drama, citizenship, religious education, English, geography, and history.

The project will organize workshops in four state secondary schools, all of whom are interested in expanding their teaching relating to the Caribbean and to religious diversity, whether or not their student body includes substantial numbers of children from Caribbean-heritage backgrounds. It will involve eight teachers and at least 120 students. The schools, in Newcastle upon Tyne, Peterlee (County Durham), Leeds, and London are diverse in the social and ethnic background of their pupils. Two have ethnically mixed student bodies including a substantial proportion of Caribbean descent, while two are predominantly white and working class in intake. At each, professionals from Talawa Theatre Company will work with key stage 3 pupils (ages 11-14) to explore themes raised by the case material, enabling them to respond creatively to concepts, questions, and topics it raises. Educational consultant and former teacher Carol Dixon will develop written materials and provide support to implement lesson plans in preparation for the workshops. Different schools will use the material in different settings, including an extra-curricular drama club and timetabled history and drama lessons, providing a variety of experiences that will be recorded in written reports and a film designed to stimulate and assist with ongoing use of the material beyond the lifetime of the project.

The workshops will be supported by a website which will provide a permanent resource for teachers, community educators, and Theatre-in-Education professionals to use with students and for young people to access directly themselves. The website will provide contextual materials, including lesson plans, narrative biographies, images, and the project film, alongside a database of primary sources. These materials will enable the development of unanticipated uses of the research material beyond the formal curriculum for creative and informal purposes by wider publics.

The teachers and schools involved in the project will connect through a 'virtual' meet-up before the workshops begin, and at a final project event where students will present their work to a community audience and each other.

The following groups will benefit from this research:

1) Young people: Participants in the workshops at the four project partner schools will benefit directly from participation in creative activities that will develop their understanding of Caribbean history and society. The opportunity to work with Talawa Theatre Company will provide strong intellectual and affective stimulation and a memorable learning experience. The creation and promotion of learning materials for schools beyond those directly involved in the project will provide for ongoing benefit to broader groups of young people. As the involvement of schools with diverse intakes suggests, the research findings that will be more widely disseminated through this project raise issues of importance not only to young people of Caribbean descent but to all young people.

2) School teachers: The creation of links between academic historians and teachers will provide a means for teachers to expand their practice in terms of both content and classroom methods. The wide online dissemination of the project's resources will mean that teachers beyond the project will benefit from a wider understanding of Caribbean history and society and from the opportunity to introduce themes relating to religious diversity. Material will be made available to enable teachers to undertake the activities designed as part of the project without professional assistance from Theatre-in-Education specialists, or to invite TiE projects into schools in future. The project will benefit the whole curriculum but in particular the cross-curricular requirement that schools ensure children's Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development.

3) Theatre-in-Education professionals: By creating resources for Theatre-in-Education the professionals working with the project will produce material that can be used in other contexts, including but not limited to schools, subsequent to the project. Talawa Theatre Company and the professionals who undertake the work in schools will have learned about the history behind the project and will be able to incorporate the workshops and learning activities designed as part of the project into their portfolio of activity in and beyond schools. The project will thus develop the careers of those involved in delivering it.

4) Archives and heritage professionals, especially those working in communities of Caribbean descent and interested in Caribbean history. The project will put a significant body of primary materials into the public domain in an accessible way. This material will be licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license, making it freely re-usable for non-commercial purposes in a variety of creative and curatorial contexts as stimulus or illustration--for example in future exhibitions or educational materials; the project will welcome re-use.

5) Caribbean diaspora community educators and family learning enthusiasts involved in the provision of supplementary education/enrichment activities for young people of Caribbean descent. The materials on the website will freely available and publicity through project partner Windrush Foundation will particularly target this group. As with group 4, the Creative Commons license will facilitate re-use of the material.