Peter Wright PhD

Australia has become home for a significant number of African migrants with the 2006 Census data showing that there were 248,699 African-born people living in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). Increasing immigration has been specified as one of the forces promoting globalisation, and identities become more complex for immigrants as they are influenced by their native culture, the local culture to which they have immigrated, and the ‘global’ culture, thus potentially leading to a plurality of identities and ‘culturalisms’ (Cuccioletta, 2001/2002).

Teaching is always performance. There are actors who are present, an audience—usually, but not always students—and most importantly a dynamic that exists between them; this relationship being key to successful pedagogy. In short, teaching is relational work. In the best of all possible worlds, this dynamic is a relationship that is forward looking, has dignity, and characterised by hope. Zournazi (2002 p. 9) describes hope as “a space for dialogue… exchange…[for] voices to be heard”, and risks for encounters with others “that create possibilities for change”. It is this possibility that is important for education in the way that inducts young people into a world that is not yet known or fully formed. This chapter describes a project conducted with pre-service teachers where a hope-full project was conducted through a one-semester unit— Learning Through the Arts—delivered in an intensive summer mode each day over two weeks. Hope as a concept was inquired into, imagined, embodied, and through arts practices, insights into hope were gained; this project thereby becoming an example of arts-relationality (Keifer-Boyd, 2011) and arts-based research (Barone & Eisner, 2011; Knowles & Cole, 2008).

Keywords: agency, intersubjectivity, drama education, applied theatre, young people, identity Theories of agency have long been implicit in drama education and applied theatre where the focus is on the performative, action, and engagement. What the notion of agency foregrounds is the individual, choice, freedom, and intentionality; it speaks to being purposeful and having and taking control in one’s life. However, agency can also be situated within the realm of self-interest where difference is individually measured and achieved; this being seen as some worse forms of new individualism defining living in the 21st Century (Elliott & du Gay, 2009). What is not as well understood is that agency also exits in relation to others with social bonds being a powerful way of knowing ourselves and attributing meaning. Intersubjectivity is a related concept that helps reveal how this process works, and the power that drama has in contributing to young people’s meaning making and the way they construct learning identities. Consequently, this entry will describe notions of agency and intersubjectivity within drama and applied theatre as particular forms of personal, social and collective action where the social and personal are inextricably linked.

This chapter describes a research project conducted amongst Black youth of African migrant descent in Western Australia. The project had various components with one being a festival where African Australian young people used the arts to both inquire into their own lives, and share them with others. The festival included a range of arts-based inquiries that culminated into a series of performative events, the first being Australian Oz Idol that playfully drew on the popular Australian and American Idol formats. The second to be describedhere was a group-devised performance called The Real Deal.

Arts Education has the potential to play an increasingly important role in the education of young people around the world. This role includes contributing to the development of young people's critical and creative facility and thereby developing in them cultural, personal and social agency. These abilities can be seen to become increasingly important in times of neo-liberalism, rising fundamentalism, global economic development, critical education, and disposability (Giroux, 2006). Consequently, Arts Education and how it is taught has consequences. What is important to understand, however, is that the role that Arts Education — like all education — plays is contextually defined thereby serving a variety of purposes across schools, communities, states or provinces, and countries. This means that provision varies markedly, that teaching is not solely confined to schools, and the way young people engage with the arts, and for what purposes is changing. For example, while all education is contextually defined, Arts Education particularly is increasingly limited less by geography or specific location and more by access to technology, the influences of economically developed societies, youth culture, and an understanding that school is only one ‘mode of delivery’ for education.

Peter Wright co-ordinates both undergraduate and postgraduate Arts Education at the Universityof New England, NSW, Australia. He is involved in pre- and in-service Teacher Education and Nursing, and Community Cultural Development projects. His recent research has considered competency in drama teachers, Playback Theatre as a contemporary form of Applied Theatre, and using the arts as a form of social-aesthetic inquiry. He has a particular interest in the nexus between learning and healing and believes that people should be involved with the Arts everyday.