module specification

Alongside the companies whose raison d'être is to engage with the community, all theatre productions, museums and galleries in receipt of public funding expend considerable resource on community engagement. This is a significant entry route into the professions. Community Engagement is a year-long module introducing and exploring the utilisation of theatre and film production design skills within a community context.

The module will initially engage with a syllabus covering all aspects of community workshop leading and design, it will then progress to cover the emergent industry agenda of widening participation in the theatrical arts.  The module will afford you the opportunity to use community engagement as active research method for production design. The module will address the academic stimuli of art, design and drama as teaching mediums and address the concerns and practical implications of professional/client group communication.  This will culminate in a work placement where skills and learning can be translated into experience and practice in workshop creating and leading. 

You will benefit for the university’s links to professional theatrical groups and bodies such as The Victoria and Albert Museum, MakeBelieve Arts, Spare Tyre, Graeae, Islington Shed, Phakama, Clean Break, International Rainbows, Lewisham Youth Theatre, various schools and colleges.  There will also be opportunities for forging new links and collaborating with diverse and various community groups.

The module demands a creative and disciplined approach to collaboration with relevant stakeholders and external partners. Within the module, you will experience work-related learning through a live project set-up and realisation or placement. You will refine a range of transferable skills in communication, management, research and analysis and are encouraged to reflect and report on the work-relevant skills you develop throughout. These skills are both desirable and advantageous for all graduates and include (for example): action planning, contribution to professional meetings, entrepreneurship, goal setting, negotiating, networking, project management, self-appraisal and team working.

Pass and completion of prior level

The module seeks to enable you to:

• use a wide spectrum of skills necessary for providing rigorous, thorough and stimulating projects for diverse and individual groups to industry standards
• analyse and observe current practice and critique examples of good and bad practice
• apply a flexible approach to leading groups based on the aspirations and experience levels of project participants
• employ relevant and appropriate documentation and follow up materials for community workshops
• use projects within community engagement as active research for production design
• continuously reflect and apply own knowledge and skills and awareness that support engagement and practice within a community scenario

The module will consist of practical and theory/practice teaching and seminar sessions.  These will occur on-campus and off-site in localities relevant to the respective client groups. 

The first half of the module will provide an introduction to the concept of engagement and participation in all its forms with case studies and practical sessions: this will lead onto the examination and exploration of workshop leading skills.
Students will have the opportunity to observe and participate in practical sessions and lectures led by professionals and be able to work with a variety of client groups in a supported environment.

Through student and tutor led sessions, students will be encouraged to examine existing and emerging practice and to create their own work with regard for methodology, relevant theory and health and safety. 

The second half of the module will allow the students either to go on placement or invent and deliver a community project with social engagement and participation at its heart.

Time will be allocated for debriefing sessions at the end of each work placement session and the students will be responsible for providing video evidence for their session. Recorded material will be made available for students’ evaluations of the processes involved.

The teaching of this module will combine tutor and student-led practical and theoretical seminars. There will be observation of workshops led by professionals and other students in the group. The module will combine theoretical research, evaluation of observations and practical experience in leading projects in the community. Students will manage their own performances and contributions to projects and productively engage in activities with workshop participants and community groups, to whom they will communicate their understandings of relevant working practices.

On completing the module you will be able to:

• analyse and evaluate the work of others, in the contexts of industry standards and your own practice and apply methods and techniques that demonstrate an approach and best practice
• create and plan industry standard theatre and/or film workshop activities (project programme, rehearse and deliver creative projects involving a range of members of the community/client groups)
• locates and demonstrate the use of personal attributes such as initiative, decision-making and  responsibility within complex and unpredictable professional contexts
• produce appropriate documentation presenting including lesson plans and follow up resources
• Use community engagement as an active research method for production design
• Apply the methods and techniques that you have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply your  knowledge and understanding to initiate and carry out cultural community projects

Coursework for submission will consist of:

1. The development, organization and execution of a bespoke art and design workshop for a clearly identified community client group. Clear communication of the aims of the project to that client group. Management and utilization of both the student and the participant’s strengths and abilities.
2. A structured documentation and resource pack including a project outline, scheme of work, session plan, client group analysis and follow up activities.
3. Reflective and analytical communication of the student’s responses to the unit, using appropriate critical language, reflecting on their own contribution and their working relationships with other participants drawing on relevant theory and critical practice. This will be presented in the form of an academic portfolio.

Work must be carefully organized and presented to indicate the development of work and the content clearly labeled. Students must attend timetabled sessions.

Bowkett, S., Lee, T., Harding, T. and Leighton, R. (2007) Success in the Creative Classroom: Using Enjoyment to Promote Excellence, Network Continuum Education
Jackson, T. (ed) (1980): Learning through Theatre, Manchester University Press
Lee, T. (2015) Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories,  Routledge
Helguera, P. (2011) Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook, Jorge Pinto Books
Boal, A. (2008) Theatre of the Oppressed, Pluto Press
Boal, A. (2002) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Routledge
Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso
Bishop, C. (2006) Participation (Documents of Contemporary Art), Whitechapel Art Gallery
Prentki, T. and Preston, S. (eds) (2009) The Applied Theatre Reader, Routledge
Schechner, R. and Appel, W. (1990) By Means of Performance: Intercultural studies of theatre and ritual, Cambridge University Press