The project CRE-ACTORS will facilitate the exchange of best VET practice between key organisations working in collectively created theatre that engages with social and cultural diversity, internationalism and minority communities. It will also provide rigorous and carefully recorded evaluation of the practices shared between the organisations, so as to offer their staff, volunteers, associated partners and the sector more broadly a robust and proven set of methodologies for work in this significant and growing area. The project partners for CRE-ACTORS are all organisations working in VET for theatre and in theatre-making, and are aware of these as socially and culturally significant activities, with the power to affect shifts in attitudes and the cultural atmosphere. They perceive an urgent need to develop training approaches that encourage new theatre forms and dramaturgies responding to the rapidly shifting context of an increasingly diverse Europe, with the overarching strategic aim of social inclusion. CRE-ACTORS will therefore concentrate on training to create devised theatre, in which many different, and perhaps competing voices are present. All of the partners are committed to social inclusion as an ideology: it is there in their policy statements, the way the organisations are run, their combination of theatre-making and education as the bases of their work, and the nature of the work they produce. There are three theatre companies in the partnership - Théâtre du Soleil, Border Crossings and Teatro dell’Argine - all making performances which are collectively devised by people from diverse backgrounds. The fourth partner is The Fence - a Swedish-based international network of dramaturgs, equally committed to theatrical and VET practice that operates at the intersection of cultures. The project aims to bring together their specific professional approaches to socially and culturally inclusive theatre in an exchange of good practices, so as to develop further their creative and VET work as a space of social inclusion. The project will be build around three staff training courses, led by the three theatre-making partners. Each of these will involve 17 staff from across the partnership, and will also engage at least 10 participants from associated partners in their localities, including diverse community groups, refugee and migrant organisations. The courses will serve to train participants in the specific approach that each partner organisation has developed to collectively created, intercultural theatre. There will be a particular emphasis on the different ways in which the partners develop their work, the relationships they create with diverse communities, the methods they follow to turn intercultural dialogue into performance, the modes through which those performances are presented, and the use they make of wraparound activities with diverse communities. The Fence will lead on the Evaluation aspects of the project. The final afternoon of each training week will be given over to a session led by this partner, which will enable participants to reflect on their learning during the week, and to apply it to the needs identified by the project in their organisations, their communities, their countries and across Europe. Through ongoing discussion and application of these methods, the project aims to establish the effectiveness of particular approaches to theatre training and theatre making in a range of intercultural contexts across Europe. As well as the courses and evaluation, this process will lead towards tangible results that will be published online: a project blog and a Good Practice Fusion Report, in the form of an e-book. For this, each theatre-making partner will produce a written account of the training week they have led, and this will be supplemented with evaluation materials by The Fence and by participants. The three accounts, with evaluations, will be brought together with introductory, contextual and concluding essays. This key project result will be the main tool for dissemination, which will operate through online networks, social media, and European Databases like EVE, euVetsupport or EPALE, to reach staff and teachers involved in theatre and VET all over Europe. Through this project, the partner organisations will equip theatre artists and educators across Europe with enhanced skills and competencies to work with cultural minorities and migrant communities, and to undertake cultural production and social integration work with refugees (including recent arrivals). In particular, the project will enable direct interventions with and by migrants that validate them as European citizens in their own right. The project also seeks to provide participating organisations with the means to create theatre that offers a more nuanced, truthful and humane narrative around cultural minorities, so aiding the promotion of social integration and more diverse European identities
Our key objective was to equip theatre artists & educators across Europe with enhanced skills & competencies to work with cultural minorities & migrant communities, & to undertake cultural production & social integration work with refugees (including recent arrivals). The importance of this cultural work has increased during the project period, with a war breaking out in Europe, & more displaced populations. Political attitudes have hardened & Othering increased. We wanted to provide participating organisations & learners with the means to create theatre that could offer a more nuanced, truthful & humane narrative around cultural minorities, working cross-culturally & in dialogue, so aiding the promotion of social integration & more diverse European identities. The CRE-ACTORS Strategic Partnership offered the partners & their staff a dynamic, collaborative transnational space in which they could learn from one another's approaches, evaluate those different methodologies, & so fuse the most successful aspects of the project learning to offer new training & theatre-making approaches that will generate powerful new performances to address their changing European societies.
The project partners are all organisations working in VET for theatre & in theatre-making, & are aware of these as socially & culturally significant activities, with the power to affect shifts in attitudes & the cultural atmosphere. We applied for the project because we perceived an urgent need to develop training approaches that encourage new theatre forms responding to the rapidly shifting context of an increasingly diverse Europe, with the overarching strategic aim of social inclusion. We were concerned by the resurgence of multicultural rather than intercultural approaches in the last few years, with the implication that only people from minority groups should be involved in cultural production that relates to those groups. We felt this was potentially divisive, & so the project developed more inclusive approaches to theatre-making, offering training in intercultural performance that acknowledges identity & cultural ownership at the same time as embracing the need for multiple voices to reflect diverse social structures. Because of this context, CRE-ACTORS concentrated on training to create devised theatre, in which many different, perhaps competing voices are present. War in Europe has increased the need for this work.