Theatre and Social Change

Level 4 introduces and develops the academic and intellectual skills that you will need for study and professional development. In addition, you will begin to learn the practical and technical skills of the performer and creator, producer and change-maker.

Performing Change I: Techniques Intensive

This module provides you with a foundation to support both your training and future creative practice in a way that is spontaneous, imaginative and disciplined. As part of Techniques Intensive, you will work towards a competency and confidence in the basic theatre making skills, languages and techniques within 1) Movement 2) Voice 3) Production and 4) Design, preparing you for later professionalisation and focussed training.

Performing Change II: Solo Performance

The module provides you with a synthesis of the individual skills acquired in Performing Change I. These previous skills will be applied to creating a solo performance or independent creative project examining the question: ‘Who are you to make what change in the world?’

Producing Change I: London & Social Change

This module provides you with a foundation to support both your training and future producing practice using London-based theatres and social organisations as primary case studies. Over the term, day trips and theatre visits will provide an introduction to how theatre can produce social change in various ways: in dramatic content, in organisational structure, in charitable or activist context.

Level 5 develops your skills towards a level appropriate to preprofessional work and gives experience of outside professional and community contexts, including via work placement, group facilitation and guest lecture series.

Performing Change III: Group Facilitation / Performing Community

The module provides you with a foundation to support your training and future creative practice as it relates to working as a group facilitator. This module will introduce the skills and processes of conceptualising, designing, leading and facilitating a group workshop.

Performing Change IV: Group Devising / Performing Utopia

This module provides you with a foundation to support both your training and future creative practice as it relates to working as part of a group as performer, collaborator and co-deviser.

Group Devised Performance has historically been a chosen artistic form for socially-engaged practice, with artists gathering together in aid of a shared vision, often to political or meaningful ends.

Activating Change II

The module runs throughout the whole year across two semesters. The first part of the module is a guest lecture series which features contemporary leaders, activists and change makers sharing their experiences of social change and how art is used as a tool to forward these agendas.

The second part of the module will advance the practice-based research from Activating Change I, further developing your artistic practice through embodied understandings of theory.

Producing Change III: Work Placement / Rotations

The module provides you with a progression of your work in Producing Change I+II with additional focus on the world beyond Rose Bruford/Sidcup. This module will consist of a rotation through three work placements, each focused on unique models of social change and the arts.

Organisations like Slung Low, Duckie, Home Live Art, The Sick of the Fringe, Arts Council England will be ideal locales for you to think about models for change, what social change looks like in practice, and provide an introduction to the roles and responsibilities inherent in producing and theatre-making.

Weekly placements are then discussed and analysed during a weekly seminar. All placement locations are vetted and organised by T&SC faculty, who will build a three-week ‘syllabus’ for their rotation of students. T&SC faculty will work closely to ensure the placement fits within National Student Union (NSU) and other work standards.

Producing Change IV: Producing for the Fringe(s)

This module builds on your previous placements and introduces you to new additional skills necessary for producing, using both the Rose Bruford Symposium (on-campus festival of art and research) and the Edinburgh Fringe (the world’s largest arts festival) as case studies.

For the Rose Bruford Symposium, you will work with staff and students at Rose Bruford to devise a system of application and curation, before assisting in curating and executing the overall event. The skills that you build as a team focussed on making the Symposium will be the same skills developed via your work on the Edinburgh Fringe.

You are expected to be a self-directed learner at year 3. Module study options include, but are not limited to:

Performing Change V: Independent Creative Project

The module runs throughout the whole year across two semesters and provides you with an opportunity to lead and produce a significant creative project responding to the theme of theatre & social change. The form that your final creative project takes is individually responsive, but could include a 30-minute solo performance, 45-minute group performance, hour-long facilitated workshop for a group that you work with over a number of weeks, a durational performance installation, or a week-long campaign that you run via social media or in person.

Activating Change III

This module runs the full year and consolidates your practical and theoretical research skills and enables you to investigate, in detail, a specific aspect of Theatre& Social Change which is of particular interest to you. The module represents the culmination of your critical reflection on performance practices, as well as models and movements for social change, and gives you the opportunity to undertake a sustained piece of independent research work.

Producing Change V: Work Placement / Social Change Showcase

This six-month work placement will give you the tools you need to experience being part of an organisation, to see a season or extended period at a workspace, and to build a project for that organisation, thus becoming leaders and innovators inside of theatre & social change. The module (and the degree) concludes with a Social Change Showcase, an opportunity for you to share these projects with professionals in the field.

• In your first year, you will complete around 380 hours of indicative scheduled learning and teaching activities and 80 hours of independent learning on projects, productions, placements or self-directed study. Assessment will be through: Performances; Coursework, presentations and portfolios; Continuous practical assessment
• In your second year, you will complete around 380 hours of indicative scheduled learning and teaching activities and 80 hours of independent learning on projects, productions, placements or self-directed study. Assessment will be through: Performances; Coursework, presentations and portfolios; Continuous practical assessment
• In your third year, you will complete around 200 hours of indicative scheduled learning and teaching activities and 280 hours of independent learning on projects, productions, placements or self-directed study. Assessment will be through: Performances; Coursework, presentations and portfolios; Continuous practical assessment

Theatre and Social Change Programme Specification