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Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

“Without youth theatre, I would never have won the Booker prize” – Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo is a British author and a…
Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

Educational Poverty

Written by Arianna Saulini, European and Domestic Advocacy Manager for Save the Children – Italy Child poverty is a multidimensional…
Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

Changing theatre through our audience

Written by Francis Italiano, Sensorium Theatre – Australia Sensorium Theatre is Australia’s premiere theatre company making work specifically designed for…
ASSITEJ TYA/USA

An Engine for Empathy: TYA in a World of Rising Hatred

Jonathan Chapman, Executive Director of TYA/USA, has written an editorial for TYA Today, the magazine published by Theatre for Young Audiences/USA. He…

“Without youth theatre, I would never have won the Booker prize” – Bernardine Evaristo

21 November 2019 18 h 51 min

By: Kaatje De Geest

No responses

Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo is a British author and a... Read more →

Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo is a British author and a longstanding advocate for the inclusion of writers and artists of colour. Upon winning the Booker Prize, she wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian, recognizing youth theatre’s importance in her own life as a writer.

“At the youth theatre, we learned to think independently and imaginatively while participating collaboratively in drama activities that developed our confidence and honed our performance skills. (…) It was the incubator of my early creativity, a safe space to spend my childhood. I would never have won the Booker prize last week, alongside Margaret Atwood, if the youth theatre had not nurtured what would become a lifelong career in the arts. ”

Read the full article here

Categories: Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

Tags: article
Educational Poverty

11 December 2018 14 h 04 min

By: Kaatje De Geest

No responses

Written by Arianna Saulini, European and Domestic Advocacy Manager for Save the Children – Italy Child poverty is a multidimensional... Read more →

Written by Arianna Saulini, European and Domestic Advocacy Manager for Save the Children – Italy

Child poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon and cannot be described solely in terms of material and economic deprivation. Poverty has an impact on children’s educational achievements; it impairs their performances at school, hampers development of their talents and limits their dreams. Poverty not only negatively influences early childhood, it also undermines children’s futures.

Save the Children gave the definition of the so-called “educational poverty”, describing it as a process of limitation of children’s right to education and deprivation of their opportunities to learn and develop the skills they will need to succeed in a rapidly changing society. Educational poverty also affects the emotional growth and the establishment of relationships with others, jeopardising the possibilities for children to discover themselves and the world.

The phenomenon of educational poverty tends to perpetuate through a vicious cycle, passing from generation to generation and, using Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities theory, depriving children and adolescents of the opportunities to know, to be, to live together and to do.

These four dimensions of educational poverty are associated with rights enshrined in the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which has been ratified by all countries in the world except United States.

In Italy the increasing phenomena of the educational poverty and social exclusion impose reflections and actions tailored on their multidimensionality.

Save the Children, with the help of a scientific committee composed by Italian experts, the Oxford University and a process of consultation, to which more than 200 minors took part, developed on an experimental basis, an index to measure Educational Poverty (IPE).

The number of children going to theatre represents one of the main factors, to evaluate the levels of educational poverty. Arts and culture perform in fact are fundamental educational mediators, able to promote the development of a critical thinking even in the younger minds. However 69% of children in Italy have not access to theatre.

Recent data have demonstrated that in Italy different social groups reach different levels of participation in cultural activities, in fact, only 2 children out of 10 coming from low income families have a real access to culture.

The access to cultural activities (such music, theatre, museums) could represent the right instrument to end the distinction between different social groups, which contribute to a perpetration of cultural exclusion.

The main objective is to accompany children and adolescents in the transition from users to producers of culture helping them, as human being of today and not adults of tomorrow, to develop and express their feelings and thoughts. Cultural activities contribute to the advancement of psychomotor, emotional and social abilities, but also of cognitive skills, motivation and learning, permitting to children and adolescents to broaden their horizons and to feel themselves as integrating part of the community.

The Educational Poverty phenomenon is also known and experienced at European level. The European Commission put in place actions and recommendations to end the vicious cycle of the social disadvantage, creating strategies in order to encourage the participation of minors to cultural and recreational activities and financing cultural investments in deprived areas in order to eradicate educational poverty and guarantee to all children equality.

For further information, read “Ending Education and Child Poverty in Europe”, edited by Save the Children.

Categories: Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

Tags: article, Save the Children
Changing theatre through our audience

21 November 2018 15 h 48 min

By: Kaatje De Geest

No responses

Written by Francis Italiano, Sensorium Theatre – Australia Sensorium Theatre is Australia’s premiere theatre company making work specifically designed for... Read more →

Written by Francis Italiano, Sensorium Theatre – Australia

Sensorium Theatre is Australia’s premiere theatre company making work specifically designed for young audiences with disabilities. When we actively ask questions about our intended audiences’ particular needs, interests, preferred modes of engagement, cognitive strengths and receptive communication abilities we can end up expanding the parameters of the kind of theatre we offer them and how they might interact with it. When we add access and inclusion considerations for young people with disability as creative prompts, we can actually help generate whole new forms of performance with potential application for all sorts of audiences.

Our audience members are typically neuro-diverse. Some of them may have difficulty moving and communicating independently. For many of them, a Sensorium show might be their first experience of theatre. Taking up the challenge to create quality performances that engage and connect with this specific audience continuously prompts us as artists to re-configure how we tell stories, how we stage them, and how we can assist programmers to present them.

When we add access and inclusion considerations for young people with disability as creative prompts, we can actually help generate whole new forms of performance with potential application for all sorts of audiences. Francis Italiano

Working with a multi-sensory palette, using touch, taste, smell, live music and a highly visual theatrical style, we use the sensory elements in our immersive installation-based shows (where the children are onstage with us) as cognitive “access points” into the narrative for our neuro-atypical audiences. So for example, if it rains in a forest story, the audience literally gets wet. If an audience goes deep-sea diving in an under-the-ocean adventure, they all take flashlights. When it’s time to co-pilot a spaceship each child pushes their own button to blast-off. Finding new ways to engage a new kind of audience offers new discoveries about what might constitute a “performance” for any young person.

Oddysea – © Jessica Wyld

Actively thinking about what each child’s experience of our shows might be has taken us down unique pathways (eg: How does a child with mobility issues navigate an immersive coral reef? Can a child with minimal hand dexterity sensor-activate spaceship control panels?) Similarly, focussing on our audience’s understanding and therefore enjoyment of and engagement with the work has seen us keep audience sizes small (15 children + accompanying adults) within our tactile interactive sets. This in turn, has meant that we’ve have had to work closely with presenters and programmers to shift their understanding of access and inclusion issues beyond physical needs into a more complex consideration of what access to meaningful arts experiences for young people with disabilities might look like.

Such a rigorous approach to creating transformative theatre-going experiences for our intended audience has brought about a paradigm shift for ourselves in terms of letting their responses to sensory stimuli inform our ideas of what a “show” can be and, importantly, prompting us to enlist young people as active participants in, rather than passive recipients of, the theatre experiences we create for them. Transforming our notions of what a theatre performance might entail allows us to witness transformation in our audiences. Time after time the parents, carers and educators of these children are struck by the unexpected creative responses that are sparked by their immersion in the sensory worlds Sensorium creates. While our work is targeted specifically at young people with neuro-diversity and disability, the elements of immersion, interactivity and agency have resonance for all sorts of young audiences.

The Jub Jub Tree – photo by Jarrad Seng
Oddysea – photo by Jessica Wyld
Oddysea – photo by Jessica Wyld

About Sensorium Theatre
Sensorium Theatre is Australia’s only company making live shows specifically designed for young audiences with disabilities. Our aim is to improve the lives of children with disability by sparking their imaginations. Based in Western Australia, and formed in 2010, we have enchanted thousands of young people with disability with the magic of live theatre. We work with children with a range of access needs – including children on the autism spectrum and those with complex and multiple disabilities who may have limited movement and/or sensory impairment and complex communication needs. Our shows and programs are developed in collaboration with our target audience which ensures that they are tailored to our audiences’ specific needs. Our delivery model enhances this experience with pre-show and post-show “embedding” workshops and digital resources to maximise their understanding and enjoyment.

Categories: Knowledge-Experiences-Reflections.

Tags: article, ASSITEJ Australia, inclusivity