OSL SPACES

Each of the spaces used for OSL (theatrical studios, rehearsal rooms, and other spaces from which furniture can be easily removed to the sides of the room) requires a re-evaluation of the whole teaching and learning experience, as any group entering these spaces must engage with a situation in which the security and reassurance of the traditionally arranged lecture theatre or seminar room is absent. Tutors can no longer rely on the hierarchy such arrangements imply, and students, as a result must participate in activities more fully. The spaces, therefore, are no more seminar rooms and lecture theatres, for the purposes of OSL pedagogy, than they are theatrical spaces. They exist in a space that is always “open”, both figuratively and actually. What this permits is a particular freedom in which, if carefully managed by facilitator/tutor, individuals exist as neither performer nor passive listener, but full participant in the discovery and creation of knowledge.