Amateur Theatre:

Amateur theatre plays an active role in the social and cultural life of many communities across England from small rural villages to market towns and cities. 1.8 million people are involved in creating amateur theatre, which attracts audiences of over 21 million each year. Yet the term 'am dram' is often used disparagingly, derided by professional theatre-makers and largely ignored by academics. This project addressed the heritage, repertoire and craft of amateur theatre making, and asked how and why people spend time making theatre for the love of it. The findings of the research have been communicated to policy makers such as the Arts Council and used by national organisations including the Little Theatre Guild and the Royal Navy Theatre Association to advocate for the positive impact this under-valued cultural work has on individuals, communities, the theatre ecology and the economy.

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Image credit Pam Johns

African Women's Playwright Network (AWPN):

AWPN is a project responding to the fact that, although women in Africa are creating a prolific amount of new and innovative theatre, they are fairly invisible and hard to access. This online network has become a hub that has connected over 400 African women creatives, theatre programmers, scholars, publishers, educators and interested audiences across 25 countries to date. Women creatives have come together virtually and physically, via two symposia where 55 women from 8 countries shared skills, workshopped common questions and brokered collaborations in real time and space. AWPN’s collaboration with the Canadian Guild of Playwrights Women Causcus has resulted in the CASA Award, an annual Fellowship that enables the mentoring of new work by Southern African writers. AWPN has also assisted with several playwrights being programmed internationally. The project investigators edited a new anthology, Contemporary Plays by African Women, with plays by women from 7 African countries. This resource, alongside the Woza Africa – Theatre in Africa toolkit for secondary schools, has led to the broadening of curricula at secondary and tertiary education levels in Africa, North America, Europe, the UK, and Asia

Image design by Jade Studios

Homeless Monopoly:

Using co-creative arts methodology and the approach of gamification, ‘Homeless Monopoly’ has involved the creation of a prototype board-game featuring real-life testimonies and scenarios of homeless and ex-homeless people in the Coventry area. The project team, Nadine Holdsworth (Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick) and Jackie Calderwood (Disruptive Media Lab, Coventry University) have worked closely with focus groups of staff and service users from project partner, Coventry Cyrenians, a charity that works to support those with experience of homelessness in the city. This collaborative approach has enabled the project team to value the knowledge of those who have experienced homelessness in Coventry (and elsewhere in the UK) to create a game that will be used to improve awareness and understanding of homelessness for young people, professionals in the charity sector and council workers

Who’s Driving the Tractor Who’s Driving the Tractor? Conversations with Women in UK Agriculture:

Who’s driving the tractor? was an exploratory, practice-based research project led by Susan Haedicke that looked at the possibilities, challenges, and contributions of women, now making up 29% of the UK agricultural workforce, to farming. The project relied on ethnographic research through interviews with women farmers, scientists and agricultural service providers involved in various aspects of agriculture and through site visits to farms run by women, major agricultural organizations, and network events for women farmers. The resulting performance, which stimulated debate in the sector, reached the local farming community through stagings at Fordhall Farm in Shropshire (2018) and agricultural experts, policy-makers and journalists at the National Farmers’ Union. The performance was reviewed in the NFU’s British Farmer and Grower magazine

Sharing global practices and perspectives on applied theatre

 Bobby Smith has collaborated with Amani People's Theatre (APT), Kenya, for several years. In 2016 Bobby and Maxwel Okuto, the director of APT, led workshops in the UK and Kenya for other practitioners, but also for young people experiencing homelessness. In 2019, they researched the challenges theatre practitioners face when addressing peace and conflict. Bobby also worked with Lagnet Theatre, Kenya, sharing approaches to Theatre for Development. Together, they devised a short piece of ‘invisible theatre’ exploring violence, which was performed in a market. In addition, Bobby is co-writing articles to share the perspectives of Rwandan and Ugandan practitioners with a global audience. One deals with theatre and young people, the other with work in refugee camps