 Hi, I'm Umut Eril, I'm a sociologist at the Open University. Hi, I'm Irini Kaptani, a research fellow, performance maker and drama therapist, working for this project at the Open University. In this online teaching video, we will be giving an introduction to how participatory theatre methods can be used in social research. This is based on the Participatory Arts and Social Action Research Project which I led. It looked at how we can use participatory theatre and walking methods to engage marginalised groups in research. Maggie O'Neill from the University of York and Tracy Reynolds from the University of Greenwich were the co-investigators and Irini Kaptani was the research fellow. Maggie O'Neill and Tracy Reynolds are presenting another video online resource which looks specifically at participatory walking methods. You might like to also watch that. Now let me begin with a brief overview of this project. The project researched the opportunities and challenges of participatory theatre and walking methods for social research and how these methods can create a space for exploring, sharing and documenting processes of belonging and placemaking among migrant families. The project develops methods and methodological knowledge of participatory theatre and walking methods by looking at how these methods can generate research data, how they can help engage participants in dialogue with other social groups and thirdly how these methods can generate a model for engaging research participants, policymakers and practitioners in an integrated way from research to engagement and dissemination. This has involved working with social scientists and arts practitioners as well as collaborating with other partner organisations such as counterparts, arts, the NAICI and the RANIMI trust. You can find more information on the project and further resources on the methods such as a toolkit and a series of short videos on the project website. The participatory theatre research practice in this project is based on the participatory performance I have been developing through my collaborations in different social research and public engagement projects. I use different techniques of playback theatre drawing on Jonathan Fox and Forum Theatre drawing on Gosto Boal as well as psychosocial methods of physical theatre exercises on everyday movements and interactions, visualisation of everyday routes and emotional mapping of localities. As well I use an exercise called talking to the panel where participants present their concerns to a panel of policy experts played by actors. But why all this and in social research? Through research I conducted with Yuval Davis between 2005 and 2008 under the ESRC identities programme we found that theatre methods emphasise their logic, performative and embodied ways of knowing. This speaks to epistemological and methodological concerns of feminist, post-colonial or decolonial and participatory action research. Yes, participatory theatre offers social researchers a performative way, beyond language, of engaging with the experiences, views and knowledges of research participants. This is really helpful when working with research participants whose English language skills might be limited, or those who do not have the cultural capital to be confident to engage discursively with researchers. Yes, absolutely. Research using participatory theatre methods can draw out responses that are relational, tacit, experiential or affective rather than simply cognitive. Another useful aspect of participatory theatre is that it constitutes a liminal space and in between, space where social reality is suspended. When participants play out scenes from their everyday life in this liminal space, these experiences can be defamiliarised and this defamiliarisation allows participants and researchers to observe, analyse and theorise these experiences together. As a form of action research, this further allows researchers and participants to reflect together on the power relations and social structures as well as behaviours involved in making the social world. In this online teaching video, we focus on one particular technique of participatory theatre, that is forum theatre. Augusto Boal developed forum theatre as part of the theatre of the oppressed. It is based on the principles of collective empowerment and emancipation by Paulo Freire, who is a theorist and practitioner of the pedagogy of the oppressed. As Freire explains, our conceptualisation of participatory ethics is motivated by a vision of what could be and the possibilities of addressing asymmetries of power, privilege and knowledge production. While he used these ethics to develop the theatre of the oppressed, this broke down the boundaries between actors and spectators to allow participants to become what he called spect actors, who can do both acting and reflecting. In a series of workshops, a theatre practitioner trains participants in basic theatre skills through games and exercises to learn to use the body as a tool for expression. Then participants are invited to show a scene of their choice on a personal experience of a social problem, conflict or dilemma. Other participants watch the scene and step into the role of the protagonist to suggest an alternative course of action, trying out different solutions to the problem. In this next scene, we can see an issue which many of the mothers experienced. That is, they feel caught up between caring for their families in the UK and their parents and family members transnationally. This tension was part of all participants' lives, and here they show a scene of asking the headteacher for special leave to take their child out of school to be able to visit a sick relative abroad. Good morning. Morning. Can you help me please? Yes. I want to go holiday. It's not holiday, because my dad is not feeling well, he's in the hospital. Sorry, it's not allowed, I'm afraid it's not allowed. But I have to go. Is my dad... I have to go. It's out of the rule. Only five days. I've said it twice, and I'm saying it for the last time. I cannot authorize. Is that clear? Thank you. You have to listen to me. I have to go. Is my dad not like anyone? I have to go holiday. I don't have... I don't want to look for my children. Sorry, you need to leave now, because I cannot do it. Thank you. Yeah. What was she doing? She was ignoring her, writing, doing her own... She's been looking somewhere else, she's not been looking at her. She's not bothering. What did she say? Yeah, nobody, anybody... She don't care? She don't care. Emotions are important, yeah. Exactly? Yeah. She didn't even listen till the end of the... Yes, that's how I know. No listen. No listen. Just know. Can you see her body, she's there. You know, she's not like... Yeah, she's very... But still, it's so powerful how your body is. Even just little things like the writing and not looking. Is there something that the mother could do? How come she got refused then? It could be. Because she didn't even want to listen properly. Totally ignored her. You could just say, I'm going to appeal it, because I know... Well, no, don't do it. I mean, no, we want to see that. Can you take her position? Take your position. I have to go. But I just can't let you leave now, madam. I'm sorry, but I have a genuine reason that I've come here. I've got a relative that's seriously ill. I've come here for your permission, but if you're not going to give it to me, I will seek other means, even if that means appealing it. Because you haven't even asked me the reason for my journey. Alright then, let me think it over and see me in two days' time. Thank you very much. What changed? What was different? Because she said she's going to appeal. Yeah. Okay, help. Okay, help. Anything changed? Is that what you're saying? She's no relaxed. Yeah, she's no relaxed. I'm saying, okay, I'll think about it. What did she do? She looked at her. She raised her hand and actually looked at her, right? That was a big change. What made you look at her? Because she was talking rules, appeal. Augusto Boal argued that Forum Theatre allows participants to rehearse for social change in real life through their interventions in the scenes. We just saw in this scene that this can involve challenging institutional rules which assume normative family lives and do not take account of transnational families. Participants' interventions are about trying out different solutions and experiencing the steps necessary for change. Such interventions may not be successful in fully achieving the SPECT actor's aims, but they can nonetheless lead to a changed situation and for social research such scenes are very productive as we can see the social constructedness and the multiple possibilities of social life. So, Forum Theatre is useful as it allows researchers and participants to reflect together on the social construction of reality, identifying social structures which lead to oppressions. It also allows participants to try out social action validating participants' local subjugated knowledges. As this is a collective process, each individual intervention brings a new aspect of knowledge into the scene and participants learn from each other. There are, of course, challenges of using participatory theatre for social research as it requires collaborations between artists and academics. Working across the academia and participatory arts are challenging as they employ different practices. Both researchers and arts practitioners need to allocate time for meetings to design and negotiate its step of the process. Forum Theatre is oriented towards exploring participants' agency in negotiating, coping with and also challenging social power structures. Most of the time, this is represented by an individual actor or individual actors. However, it's important not to foreshorten the analysis of power or oppression simply to interpersonal relationships or to individualize responsibility for social problems and their solution. To address this challenge, enough time needs to be spent to reflect with participants about structural power relations, institutional and organizational aspects and also possibilities for collective action. Another challenge is to ensure that participants are invited to give shape to the themes and issues they want to explore in order to avoid a hegemonic gaze which casts them only as having problems. This challenge can be counterbalanced by allowing participants to express all aspects of their experiences. We did this also by using other methods such as playback theatre, physical theatre, psychosocial mapping and of course walking methods. To conclude, participatory theatre methods can contribute embodied dialogic and affective knowledges to social research. The methods help to create a convivial space for participants to exchange experiences and build shared knowledges and can address social isolation. The methods hold the potential to articulate subjugated knowledges collectively and through research dissemination can reach wider audiences. These methods can make an important contribution to research on issues which are difficult to address verbally. For example, in our research with migrant families we were able to explore embodied knowledges of racism, care and relationship building which can be difficult to articulate verbally. As we are experiencing the widening of inequalities in the UK and globally it becomes more important for researchers to ensure that participants can co-produce knowledge about themselves and contribute to developing policy and practices about the issues affecting them.