Output details

"Dialogue"

"Dialogue" was an experiment to identify optimal ways in which students training to become managers of the arts and members of broader non-specialist cultural communities can work together to create art that is valuable to both groups. The researcher - the Director of the Barbican and Guildhall School’s Creative Learning Division – designed the structure of "Dialogue" and led its artistic growth from initial vision to evaluation.

The research process drew a number of diverse participant groups together: a range of age groups, from primary school children to those over 65; different ethnicities; different home districts in London. These participants worked in mixed companies with undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Guildhall School on various creative projects designed to test a number of contrasting models of participatory work within the arts.

Crucial to this experiment was detailed observation conducted during the sessions, and a thorough debriefing period and questionnaire conducted at its end. Through these methods the researcher was able to gather together the reactions of all participants and correlate them to the age groups represented. The resulting data will now be used to adjust many parameters of future versions of "Dialogue", including the ways in which groups mixed by age can best be facilitated, how ownership of projects can be shared, the ways in which the choice of material can respond to social and cultural factors, and how final performances can sit within a process-centred project.