{"id":37,"date":"2019-01-23T17:42:07","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T17:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/?p=37"},"modified":"2019-01-23T16:32:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T16:32:44","slug":"participation-3-different-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/2019\/01\/23\/participation-3-different-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Participation: 3 different ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

Participation is at the heart of what we’re doing on this module. This is not only because it’s a central idea\u00a0in drama\/ theatre\/ performance studies, but also because a large portion of your assessment will require you to demonstrate how effectively you have participated\u00a0on the module. For this reason, I wanted to take a minute to outline what we mean by this term, and to ask you to think a bit more about what it might mean to you. But there are\u00a0a lot of\u00a0big ideas contained within this, so (for now) I’ve decided to break it down into 3 different\u00a0aspects of participation which are particularly relevant to this module.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Participation and performance.<\/strong> Participation is central concern for contemporary theatre-makers because it opens up the possibility of rethinking the performer\/audience relationship and invites activated spectatorship<\/a>. It is a term which is also often used to describe the work that theatres do to try and find new audiences — for example,\u00a0by working with schools or community groups — in Newcastle,\u00a0Northern Stage<\/a> has a Participation<\/a> team devoted to doing just this.<\/li>\n
  2. Participation in higher education.<\/strong> Similar to theatre and performance, participation in the university is often linked to widening participation agendas, like our own Partners<\/a> initiative.\u00a0But here in the School of English<\/a> we also think about it in terms of how students are taking part in their own learning processes. You may have come across the ‘university is like a gym’ metaphor which is often used to describe undergraduate studies (i.e. you can pay for your membership, but\u00a0you won’t get fitter\u00a0unless you actually go along and use the equipment).\u00a0The logic behind this metaphor\u00a0may indeed\u00a0be flawed.<\/a>\u00a0Still, taking part in an academic community seems to me to be a\u00a0small but\u00a0powerful way of resisting the individualist, consumerist forces working on higher education.<\/li>\n
  3. Participation and society<\/strong>. In democracy, participation is understood to be a fundamental principle. And\u00a0yet\u00a0this also\u00a0presents\u00a0a paradox because participation is often low —\u00a0i.e. many people don’t use their vote —\u00a0and so it is also a major challenge to democracy (Chilambo, 2007). This is a very real concern for all of us. As I’m writing this post, the question of Brexit is thoroughly unresolved and the whole event has raised questions about what has happened to our democracy<\/a>, and whether a people’s vote or final say referendum<\/a> would give the people of the UK more or less of a say in what happens next. These are issues concerned with what constitutes participation, and whether or not it is essential to democratic process.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let me be clear: it is the first two aspects of participation that we’re going to be most concerned with on this module — I’m not suggesting we can resolve the many, complex problems thrown up by\u00a0Brexit\u00a0with the work that we do on SEL1031! But it is useful to\u00a0consider how some of the issues we think about in relation to drama, theatre, and performance can model or lend insight into real world scenarios. After all, much like the socio-political world, theatre is a public forum: it is an event, in which real people and objects are presented to other people in a shared space.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Participation is at the heart of what we’re doing on this module. This is not only because it’s a central idea\u00a0in drama\/ theatre\/ performance studies, but also because a large portion of your assessment will require you to demonstrate how … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/rosalindhaslett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}