Beth Osnes

The Hammer and the Carpenter: Lessons from the Field for Effective Professional Development by Teaching Artists.

ABSTRACT This article draws on lessons from the field to offer further guidance for arts organizations and teaching artists leading professional development.

A framework for engaging Navajo women in clean energy development through applied theatre

Through applied theatre, Navajo women can participate in authoring a new story for how energy is mined, produced, developed, disseminated and used in the Navajo Nation. This article is an analysis of a creative process that was utilised with primarily Navajo women to create a Navajo Womens Energy Project (NWEP). The framework for this creative process guided women in deeply considering energy issues from their own perspective and value base, facilitated them in articulating their values around energy, assessing the current energy situation not authored by women and invited them to imagine what kind of energy future they want. Finally, it facilitated women in identifying and rehearsing actions to move from the current story to the new story. This process is designed to include the participation of women who have rich life experience that is often in intimate and direct relationship with the environment, who hold knowledge in their bodies from lived experience and value traditional views and beliefs. The framework for applied theatre in this article helped to lay the groundwork for the NWEP in a relatively short amount of time in a manner that was inclusive, efficient, aesthetically stirring and fun. This framework has the potential to expedite and support the participation of women in authoring a new story for a wide variety of social issues.

Introduction to Shine

This chapter introduces Shine, a performance experience for youth that is designed to engage participants in resilience planning. It weaves climate science and artistic expression into a story that spans 300 million years of geological time to convey how energy, humanity, and climate are interrelated. Through humor, music, and movement, Shine physically engages youth and leads participants to embody aspects of climate science and human development that ultimately led to this current moment—where our use of fossil fuels is impacting our climate. This chapter provides the background in the Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Initiative, the theoretical foundation for this examination of Shine, and a synopsis of the story.

Design of Shine as a Method for Engagement

This chapter includes performance materials for various levels of youth-engagement for use by teachers, community organizers, or faith leaders. The “Notes from the Composer,” and the “Notes from the Choreographer” both have corresponding videos (links provided), of which these are a slightly adjusted written transcription. These video recordings are educational tools to prepare either the facilitator, student, or scholar to more deeply appreciate the music and the movement within this performance. Materials for building curriculum included in this chapter can be adapted or used as they are or be scaled to match the age of the youth participating. The sample exercises and games can be used to prepare youth for creative expression, to build community, to expand their expressive range, and for fun.

Outcomes from the International Tour of Shine

This chapter describes how Shine was uniquely mounted in host communities during its year-long tour. Shine reached four different nations where English is used: Navajo Nation (a semi-autonomous Native American territory in the USA), four cities within the USA, the UK, and South Africa. This is the most substantial portion of the book and contains the heart of what was experienced and learned from this entire project. For each performance within a different community, the following is provided: a short description, a detailed described of the process and the resulting performance, youth-authored solutions, lessons learned and recommendations, and feedback from performers and/or audience members. The intention behind the tour was to learn from the diverse approaches by host communities and youth around the world.

Mothers empowering their voices for activism

Abstract The Empowering Mother Voices Workshop—shared with mothers from around the world between 2004 and 2014—uses vocal exercises and applied theatre as a tool for mothers to gain skills and confidence for using their voices publicly to speak out. Through both quantitative and qualitative research, a deeper understanding of the barriers and solutions to speaking publicly experienced by some mothers emerges. Findings support that success results from positioning mothers as the authors and experts of their own lives and by supporting them in rehearsing new realities—negotiating the costs and benefits of new public use of their voices together in community.

Views, events, and debates: Edited by Liz Cooke

Here we are profiling the highly respected and highly influential organisation, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, better known as DAWN. For over a quarter of a century DAWN has researched and advocated on economic and gender justice in the South in the face of globalisation, and ever-more polarised degrees of wealth and poverty across the globe. In 1987, DAWN authors Gita Sen and Caren Grown published their groundbreaking book, Development Crises and Alternative Visions, which remains a fixture on gender and development studies reading lists everywhere A lot of readers will be familiar with the work of Women in Development Europe (WIDE) and may well have attended one or more of their dynamic and inspiring annual conferences, a regular date in the calendar for many of us. Hit by a funding crisis last year, WIDE is now regrouping, and here Wendy Harcourt, WIDE Chair from 2004 to 2008, talks about the network as it plans for the future