Module Summary

This module does not directly involve public engagement, but instead offers the students the chance to develop their understanding of using theatrical and performance modes to engage with communities. The knowledge and students developed in this module are therefore complementary to engagement activities they may be involved with in the future.

Module aims

Working through specific national and international case studies, this module is concerned with the creative methodologies being employed nationally and internationally in activist forms of socially-engaged art and new kinds of digital based arts activism and practice. It focuses on the potential of theatrical and performance modes to pose questions and invite reflection through its ability to intervene, surprise, disrupt, subvert, transform and imagine possible future worlds. This may relate to a desire to provoke questions related to environmental issues, capitalism and globalization, poverty and austerity, identity politics or to make manifest voices from the margins of society. The module focuses on two areas of practice that broadly coalesce around the street and the digital. The first half is concerned with the use of theatrical modes in grass-roots activism, protest, parades and street theatre. The second half considers how digital activism and creative approaches to digital practice may be employed to foster networks, collaborations and movements that are about tangible change within and across communities.

Teaching Structure/ Pedagogical approach

Could we add a paragraph on the pedogeological approach?

WEEK 1: Performance and the politics of intervention
WEEK 2: Exploring key terms in intervention and provoking change: agency, empowerment, participation and social justice
WEEK 3: Performing activism: art, protest and social movements
WEEK 4: Street theatre on the global stage
WEEK 5: Digital activism and digital storytelling
AND
Weekend intensive – including sessions looking at practical skills in creating interventionist performance and workshops supporting the development of their practical assessment for the module (potentially including external guest sessions)

WEEK 6: Assessed project development (student-led 6 hours)
WEEK 7: Networks of change: utilising global platforms to facilitate change
WEEK 8: Assessed project development and observation
WEEK 9: Assessed performance (including self and peer assessment)
WEEK 10: The futures of socially-engaged performance and digital media

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a theoretical and practical understanding of a range of radical and subversive forms of performance that aim to intervene in social injustice and provoke change.
• Demonstrate a theoretical and practical understanding of a range of radical and subversive forms of performance that aim to intervene in social injustice and provoke change.
• Demonstrate a conceptual and practical understanding of how digital platforms can foster networks that can support social movement and contribute to social justice.
• Develop key creative and collaborative skills that will enable them to work in professional contexts and to critically reflect on their own and others practice.

Student Feedback

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Further Links

• Contact the module leader - If you're happy to be contacted by people wanting to know more please add your email address - otherwise feel free to delete this line.
• Access our reading list - Amend to your reading list
• View module proposal - Amend to link to your own proposal