The good thing about this MA is that as everyone is looking into such a diverse range of projects, it is very hard to feel yours is inadequate as you have been researching and developing something completely different to the person next to you. I was totally enthralled when watching everyone else presentations, and although I didn't necessarily understand everything I was being told, I was still interested and excited. It was good to be able to see in which direction everyone was going and how people had developed since their initial ideas.
My project has not so much come to a definite conclusion, but it is more about the research I have undertaken and what I have found out about my sector and the subject I wanted to look into.
For me the process of finding out about communities, what makes them and what defines them is such an important one especially as it links so closely with the applied theatre sector that I wish to work in. Each group that I work with and go on to work with will be part of a community in their group, which is then part of a wider community in society, so it was really valuable and important to be to be able to learn about this from a wide range of sources.
I firstly complied a survey as I wanted to be able to send this out via my social networking sites so that I would attract a lot of responses, I did this through the very useful site Survey Monkey, which lets you distribute your surveys in a number of ways. I then just read as much as I could about community theatre, applied theatre and creativity when working with groups, and also my work placement has greatly helped with this project. The interviews I conducted for the presentation were with people who I thought would have apposing views of what community was, and if I had more time I would have liked to interview more people of different ages and backgrounds so I could have got a more broader range of responses.
As stated in a previous blog I used LinkedIn as a way to share my survey and they have some brilliant discussions on there. I got some useful responses to a discussion I started. Some responses were:
'When I think of the word community, as it relates to theater, it simply means theater for the extended family. How can you improve or inform the people around you for the betterment of all. When you empower the people in the community by getting them involved in community, You raise the attitude of the people by raising the aptitude of the community.'
'Community as it relates to theatre is like extended family, but I've run into politic in the local theatre community that I really abhor. It's a small bedroom community, but there are some egos that make it hard to enjoy the local climate. Hopefully they'll realise that, and change over time. Thankfully with the new social networking tools like Facebook and Linked in, we feel less out-of-sight-out-of-mind, which is a pet peeve of mine'
The reason I chose to display my research findings in the form of a film is because I had a lot of statistics and feedback, I felt that if I had just stood there and read it out then it wouldn't be a creative representation, and I wanted to provide something more creative in which I could show some images of my time in placement, and my film interviews as well. And the song I chose is one that is used at my work placement with some of the different youth groups for mainly mime activities.
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