Y Pwyllgor Diwylliant, y Gymraeg a Chwaraeon

Adolygiad Polisi: Cyfraniad y Celfyddydau a Chwaraeon at Adfywio Cymunedol

WAPA

December 4^th 2003 Dear Sir, Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee Policy Review: The Contribution of Arts and Sport to Community Regeneration Further to your letter of 3^rd October the Wales Association for the Performing Arts is delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the above review. By way of background I would remind members of the Committee that WAPA is the main umbrella group for the professional performing arts groups in Wales. We are pleased to make the following observations linked to the bullet points.

1. WAPA has advocated for some time the need for a lateral rather than a vertical approach to policy making in the Assembly. We are hidebound by putting subjects in one category and one category only when an inter-disciplinary approach may be better suited. Much work done by WAPA members in theatre, dance and opera is community oriented but liaison with agencies responsible for community and social service work is difficult because the arts is perceived to be predominately recreation and leisure. The Westminster Government did try and address this to some extent by creating a mixed policy group straddling the DFES and the DCMS and it ought to be possible to do the same in Wales. Existing performing arts groups have found it very difficult to access Objective 1 Funding because of the complicated labyrinth of structures it is necessary to navigate in order to be part of an application.
2. Virtually all performing arts groups now work at community level and see that as a high priority in their work. Broadly speaking this can be done in three ways:

a) The larger organisations such as the Welsh National Opera operate community programmes (in their case known as WNO MAX) in order to widen the appreciation of the artform to groups who might otherwise be unable to access it. This creates an interest and a focus in small communities. It entails professionals working in and with local groups in order to make a piece of art which usually, but not exclusively, has relevance to the community from which is has emerged. The benefit to a local community of a group of professionals working with them to make a creative contribution to that locality cannot be underestimated. It pulls together talents and creates working relationships that could not occur outside arts projects. Diversions, the National Dance Company of Wales, spends more time in the communities working in participatory projects than it does actually performing on traditional stages. b) The second approach which is more common in Wales is where groups like the eight Theatre in Education companies will devise work on contemporary issues which will address how these issues impact on the local community. These are likely to include subjects which explore identity, neighbourliness, social inclusion, immigration, drugs etc. Through the education system and other agencies the projects will seek to ask questions, suggest answers or remedies and tease out ways of dealing with local problems. Most of these companies used to have a discreet community policy but years of standstill funding during the 1990’s meant that they had to drop this work in favour of the purely educational. If resources allow, and particularly if the Assembly through the Arts Council accept that this type of work is both necessary and valuable, the companies would wish to re-establish a robust community policy. Additionally although directly funded only to deal with young people of school age a number of the companies have projects directed at older age groups or run Youth Groups. c) WAPA also represents organisations which almost exclusively work in the community sector such as Community Dance Wales and Voluntary Arts Wales. Both these organisations will undoubtedly make separate representations to this review. Dance work in particular which focuses on expression through physicality, has close links with sport.

1. The support mechanisms we would suggest need to be established at local authority level. The creation of Arts Development Officers in many unitary authorities has helped but it is still patchy. An obligation by the National Assembly for every Local Authority to have a policy statement which encompasses arts, sports and community would greatly help.
2. An example of Best Practice we would offer up for closer scrutiny is the Acting Out project run by the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff.

  Acting Out Cardiff has the potential to:

• Enable students to reconsider their feelings and attitudesEnable students to learn about self and othersTeach students to express themselves through both verbal and non-verbal communication
• Encourage students to listen to, understand and evaluate their own thoughts and the views of others
• Encourage personal and social responsibility (Making a performance with and for enjoyment/ education of others)
• Engage students in past and current cultural / social issues
• Encourage students to develop belief and trust in own abilities and the world around them
• Develop physical stamina, co-ordination and balance
• Empower students to develop self confidence and a sense of place in the world
• Acting Out works with young people who are or perceive themselves to be on the margins of mainstream education. The majority of young people involved have issues with low confidence, truanting and disruptive or reclusive behaviour patterns. There is often a feeling amongst the young people of not belonging, which manifests itself in diverse ways. The processes of drama based activities engage young people in bridging the gap between imagined and real worlds. Through 'imagining’ young people are able to express the often difficult 'realities’ of their lives in a 'safe’ but truthful way using metaphor. In this way they can communicate to an audience the 'stories’ of their lives in a universal medium, which is acceptable to others and provokes thought and enjoyment. This in turn makes the young person who is performing their story feel good, like they have a voice to which people want to listen. Engaging with drama and performing a piece of theatre is ultimately a validating experience for those who take part in the creative process. The experience of performing for the first time in front of an audience and feeling the applause at the end of a performance is for many young people life affirming and consequently life changing. One 14 year old boy, with socially disruptive tendencies and extreme stage fright, said after his first public performance at the Sherman Theatre: "I want to do it again and again. It feels so good." When asked why he felt so good he said, "Because my mum is proud of me, my mum has never had a reason to be proud of me before." For this boy, his own pleasure of performing was directly linked to making someone else happy. He had a taste of creating a positive reputation for himself rather than a destructive one and through his experience of performing within the imagined world of the play he had become aware of changes he was able to make within his everyday world.
• Acting Out Cardiff is explicitly about the realisation of potential. There is a strong ethos of encouragement and a belief that potential is not an appendage or an add-on but that it already resides within each individual and within each group. The young people that join the Acting Out company and take part in the Extending Opportunities Programme at the Sherman theatre are taken on a tangible journey of discovery. This mode of discovery and education is best realised through engagement with the performing arts. Why? Because creating theatre begins with asking questions and in finding answers to these questions the young people come to know their own views and those of others more clearly. Significantly also by expressing their ideas, dreams, likes, dislikes, prejudices and desires within a dramatic context they are challenged to frame and reframe their usual ways of thinking and doing. For example, when encouraged (or in some cases provoked, where resistance to participate occurs) into improvising a scene without a known outcome, some students discover an enormous sense of freedom. It is a freedom framed within explicit rules of improvisation, so is ultimately safe, and at the same time dangerous. As they discover the potential 'rush’ of excitement from being creative and spontaneous, the desire to be disruptive or destructive seems to dissolve. Flash moments of success and joy in a drama workshop, whether felt internally by a student or explicitly acknowledged by the whole group, are keys to each student understanding that they have the ability to achieve success in things that they had hitherto found boring or even impossible.
• Acting Out is a project, which contributes to social unity, through creative endeavour. This sense of unity is achieved on a number of levels. Parents talk about their children being 'better behaved’ at home since joining the project. One mum is over the moon that after getting a letter home every day from school saying how badly behaved her daughter had been, she doesn’t get any. She says that her daughter seems to be happier in herself and consequently she is helping out at home and being more a part of the family. Being part of a group, with a shared purpose of creating performance for others (an audience) causes, to varying degrees, the young people involved to take on and practise responsibility. The process of making theatre, though necessarily 'untidy’ and unpredictable, demands cohesion and a sense of self within a social context. This isn’t easy for many of the young people on the Acting Out project, but progress is continually being made. In the Spring the group will explicitly take on a social cohesion, peer education project when they devise and tour a performance based on their own experiences of loss connected with joy-riding in Cardiff.

In addition to development of soft 'life’ skills and improvements in working and communicating with others, Acting Out students gain specific skills in theatre making. The nature of the work is interdisciplinary, encompassing all areas of professional theatre practice from performance based work to stage design and video work, sound and lighting. The student’s hard work is accredited with a Btec Level One Diploma or Certificate in Performing Arts. Again giving them recognition for work they have achieved and for many might be their only qualification on leaving the school system. We hope that these comments and examples are of value to you and the Committee in your deliberations. Yours sincerely, Chris Ryde
Chair