Therapeutic Theatre: Acting for Change
Out-Side-In helps individuals to reach their true potential and to reach out through their ability to relate to others in a way that can contribute to the improvement of conditions for individuals, groups, and communities.
Out-Side-In works with marginalised and vulnerable groups in the community through performing arts projects that emphasise the therapeutic benefits of engaging in the arts and the transformational potential of theatre making.
Therapeutic Theatre projects facilitate the social inclusion of those involved by supporting the expression of personal narratives and raising awareness on individual, social and cultural conditions.
Projects are devised to meet the needs and expectations of specific groups. Generally they follow a four step models that help those involved to gain in confidence and be empowered:
- narration and exploration of a particular experience
- validation of the experience through creative expression in dramatic forms
- communication through performance and interaction with audience
- transformation and change at a personal and collective level
Examples of recent projects:
'Dramatherapy workshop with Afghani unaccompanied minors: developing personal story, identity and belonging'; in collaboration with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. This workshop aimed at supporting young Afghani boys recently arrived in the UK to create a bridge between their past and their present by developing personal narratives that would help to identify resilience factors from their country of origin and psychosocial stress factors in the country of arrival. The workshop aimed at identifying ways of improving the integration of young Afghani boys and how their personal social and health needs can be best met. A report of the outcomes of the project is available through this link.
'Mental health service user involvement through drama and theatre': original production and performance of 'Call for Rescue' by members of the Harrow User Group with the support of Mind in Harrow. The play was presented at two conferences in London: Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust Nursing Conference and Mental Health in the Asian Community in Harrow Conference. A detailed account of this project is available in two different editions of The Prompt: The Magazine of the British Association of Dramatherapists, Summer and Autumn 2006 (see Resources page).
This original project can also be found in New Ways of Working in Mental Health, NIMHE, Allied Health Professions Document, Supplement C - Examples of Good Practice and Innovation, p.2-3 ('Dramatherapy and Mental Health Service User Involvement Workshop'), October 2008