Issue 2: What's wrong with the word education?

Convener: Sebastian Warrack

Participants: Helen Burgun, Nick White, John Wright, Chris


Summary of discussion:

• As a term, “Education” is:
o Pejorative
o Formal
o About achieving
o Fitting criteria
o Conforming to a set agenda
o Codified
o Target-driven
• Everything felt freer in late 1970s
• Connotations of didactic “theatre-in-education”
• Privilege – connotations of a transaction – a payment and a return. Only available to those with money
• Not associated with independent thought, self-taught
• “Education” term departmentalizes organizations too much
• Deters greater integration into whole process
• Participants should be “experiencing” the process, not merely observing and studying it
• Work is about entry points
• “Education” work has become more centralized – fewer arts centres exist and fewer organizations are doing more of the work (e.g very few arts centres are doing this work anymore but the Lyric’s creative learning department has grown from 1 in 1996 to 7 in 2010
• Engagement is still very important at Arts Council
• What ages participate in this work – still feels very age-related
• How do groups engage who are not obvious groups (e.g. 30/40 year old professionals)
• Access should be for everyone
• “Education” too strongly associated with specific groups
• Post-show play as opposed to post-show talk?
• “Education” is old-fashioned term but TBAI tend to eschew “fashionable”
• Justifying work for educational reasons is a dead-end argument – what if show isn’t particularly educational, does that then mean it has no value?
• John Wright’s BIG TELLY example illustrating how this work should inform company’s whole programme of work
• Need to create one’s own terminology
• Convention to have no convention
• Own one’s own entry points
• “Education Manager” at Theatre Royal Plymouth because his work is specifically linked to schools
• Participation – it’s broad but also scary
• Frantic Assembly has no term for their “Education” work/department