Although community theatre projects usually have a special focus on certain social and/or moral issues and are created with the intention of having a short/long-term effect on the community they work with, the field has faced the problem of evaluating the success of these projects due to a lack of general validating and quality assessment system (and due to the duality of aesthetic expectations and social effectiveness). The present project design sets the target to create an international partnership to develop a validating system specifically for (adult) community theatre projects. In the framework of an ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership, we intend to team up with experienced partners in the field of community theatre to work together in a 29-month-long period in order to discuss the experiences and possibilities of evaluating, validating community theatre projects with the outcome of a handbook and toolbox helping new community theatre projects. The main objective of our project is to create and share an evaluation methodology in a democratic system (in the equal relation of theatrical and sociological professional) which are acceptable and relevant from sociological perspective but are also applicable by theatre practitioners - without the necessary involvement of sociologists. In the frames of this project design, we target non-formal educational forms (community theatre projects) through which participants (the audience/participants of the projects) learn indirectly (e.g. active citizenship, democratic citizenship, personal skills etc.). In this context, other practising experts creating community theatre projects can be also considered as subjects of adult education. They will be also the main beneficiaries of the intellectual product of the project (the handbook). The intellectual outputs of our project are an evaluation methodology collection and a handbook for theatre experts and sociologist researchers who take part in creating community theatre projects for adults. Our secondary target groups are the stakeholders and decision-makers who support, evaluate and describe community theatre projects. For them, the development of this project would be specifically useful. Activities in the project: - mobilities (partner organizations visiting each other) - workshops (partners introducing themselves and discussing validation with invited experts) - development of the intellectual product (developing an evaluation toolbox and a handbook for community theatre projects) Summary of the Handbook (O1): The prepared handbook will give a practical example of the usage of the evaluation method developed through the project in a comprehensible way. This book (and its translations) assures that the methodology will be comprehensible, transparent, adaptable and usable not just for the project partners but for a community theatre professionals working with any social issues. The handbook will archive also the development process of the methodology collection, but its function is more complex. It introduces the implementation of the project, its difficulties and lessons. It introduces the community theatre practices and works of the partners from the pilot project’s perspective. This introduction validates the project from a theatrical point of view and also makes a solid background to understand the project. The description of the pilot projects from common criteria helps the professional using the book with practical aspects for the use of evaluation methods. Summary of the Collection of Evaluation methods (O2): This is an embeddable online (flash based) toolbox consisting of a step-by-step introduction and at least twelve (3*4) methods chosen and tested collaboratively by the partners. Methods consist of both individual and collaborative, verbal and non-verbal arts-based techniques that can be used by lay participants and interpreted by participants and arts professional together. Methods are allocated for a diagnostic, an intermediate, and a closing phase of a community theatre based citizenship education process. All methods are presented through short descriptions to arts practitioners and by making downloadable all the required documents for implementation. Documentation consists of the instructions for whom the tool is dedicated (participants). Documentation format depends on the given method i.e modifiable pdf for diaries, xls files for questionnaires, word files for drama based evaluation games etc.) The idea behind using embeddable flash for the collection is that, instead of simply putting the tools online, we would like to enhance the dissemination of the toolbox: Community theatre projects in the future may make public on their own homepage what evaluation techniques they use for tracking their citizenship education process.
The main objective of our project was to create and share an evaluation methodology that is useable without the necessary involvement of sociologists. In the frames of this project design, we aimed to target non-formal educational forms (community theatre projects) through which participants (the audience/participants of the projects) learn indirectly (e.g. active citizenship, democratic citizenship, personal skills etc.). In this context, other practising experts creating community theatre projects can be also considered as subjects of adult education. Our project intended to broaden the competences and knowledge of adult educators, community theatre practitioners by bringing these two worlds closer to each other. We wanted to give a tool to their hands which not only helps to increase their knowledge and to make their work more effective, but also, they can communicate the well-established results and effects of his/her work to the external world more self-confidently. The social significance of community theatre lays in the fact that this method is based on the inclusion of civilians, by blurring the border between performers and non-actors. This theatrical form ensures that participants can shape the events and create their own relation to the focus point to a greater extent. Our aim was to show that by giving an open and road space, if a participant can make choices and decisions in his/her imagination or in a fictitious world, he can do so in real life, too. These theatrical projects focusing on a certain social issue make it possible - with the help of conversation, sharing personal stories and experiences, and actions based on collective thinking - for participants to know themselves and their environment better, and to see the world not in static motionlessness, but as a course of proceedings. With the help of an evaluation system we wanted concrete proof that community theatre projects can give opportunity for the participants to have an actual impact on the events, on the other hand, they are able to reflect on the events of the performance, can think about the moral / social problem proposed by the performance. Although the projects focused on social issues, they don’t necessarily meet differentiated sociological evaluation methods of sociology gaining more and more ground. Partially, because these can be executed exclusively by professional sociologists, and partially because most cooperations lack the sociological approach - there is only a few sociologists researching art projects. Additional difficulties of these cooperations (different discipline, different perspectives and priorities) come only afterwards. This is why the main objective of our project was to create and share an evaluation methodology in a democratic system (in the equal relation of theatrical and sociological professional) which are acceptable and sound from sociological perspective, but are also applicable by theatre practitioners - without the necessary involvement of sociologists. The partnership wanted to achieve that the evaluation methodology we created during the project serves as a useful tool to both (community) theatre practitioners, stake-holders and decision-makers. According to our hopes and intentions, the field of community theatre becomes more approachable, visible and recognized for the upper target groups. As a benefit of the project, we wanted to achieve that partner organizations enrich their work with sociological tools, they are able to analyze and evaluate the success of their previous and future community theatre projects. Our objective was also to found common ground for the future evaluation system, and also to got an international overview on the field partner organizations work on. We also wanted to achieve that this project creates a strong base of community theatre network around Europe and opens the gate to create more cooperations like this to prove together the strong points of artistic way of non-formal education.
Káva Cultural Workshop Association has lead several community theatre projects through the past years. During these times the Association noticed that community theatre projects usually have a special focus on certain social and/or moral issues and are created with the intention of having a short/long-term effect on the community they work with. The field has faced the problem of evaluating the success of these projects due to a lack of general validating and quality assessment system (and due to the duality of aesthetic expectations and social effectiveness). We detected that other theatre professionals faced the same problem. Our main need with the partnership was to have concrete tools and methodology in our hands to measure our work and its effect in the field of community theatre among adults. Our presumption was not only that artistic forms of evaluation are more organic to artistic interventions, but also that art practitioners can actively contribute to new sets of methods. Drama professionals use an array of tools in the course of drama sessions in order to diagnose the state of group work, participants level of learning and achievements in the rehearsal process, but these conventions were not formalized, skills of analysis are tacit, and findings remained implicit. By reflecting and formalizing these activities this project had the motivation to involve community theatre professionals in the development of a handbook and a toolbox for evaluating citizenship education processes. The project borned to fill the need to create an international partnership to develop a validating system specifically for community theatre projects based on the exchange of already existing tools and methodology that the professionals used in their practise, formulating it into a tool that helps every theatre professional start, proceed and evaluate their own community theatre projects which we find a particularly powerful method. Káva and the partners detected the common need to create and test such an evaluating system to help theatre professionals and other professionals working with theatre methods to measure the efficiency of their processes and results without the need of working together with sociologists which is often a problematic point in such project because of the lack of time of sociologists in the field.