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Young People's Theatre and the New Ideology of State Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Nicolas Whybrow
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Abstract

In NTQ38 (May 1994) Nicolas Whybrow offered a brief account of the immediate threat facing theatre in education (TIE) in England and Wales. In the first of two articles in which he examines the general state of theatre produced for both the formal and the informal education sectors, he goes on to provide a more searching contextualization of some of the changes now taking place. Here, he analyzes the implications for TIE of the Education Reform Act of 1988, and the effect of Youth Service policies on theatre for youth work. Nicolas Whybrow recently completed a PhD based on the practices of Red Ladder, Blah Blah Blah, and Leeds TIE, and is about to take up a lecturing appointment at the Workshop Theatre (School of English), Leeds University.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 39 , August 1994 , pp. 267 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes and References

1. ‘SCYPT Statement’ (for the Arts Council Conference ‘Theatre and Education’), SCYPT Journal, No. 13 (09 1984), p. 4–6.Google Scholar

2. ‘Related venues’ refers to Youth Service establishments not strictly definable as youth clubs. For example, deaf clubs, Asian girls' groups, or ‘detached’ groups (which have no specified building in which to meet). The term ‘theatre in youth work’ is relatively new and probably attributable to the artistic director of Red Ladder: see Feldberg, Rachel, Youth Arts, Discussion Document (London: National Arts and Media Strategy Unit, Arts Council, 1991), p. 6.Google Scholar

3. Compare Jackson, Tony, ‘Didactic Theatre in the Thirties – Some Precedents for TIE’, SCYPT Journal, No. 8 (09 1981), p. 3–12.Google Scholar

4. Compare Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. McGrath, John, ‘No Politics Please, We're British’, The Guardian, 5 10 1984, p. 19.Google Scholar

6. Feldberg, , op. cit., note 2, p. 1.Google Scholar

7. See Davies, Bernard, Threatening Youth: Towards a National Youth Policy (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), p. 34.Google Scholar

8. Pring, Richard, The New Curriculum (London: Cassell, 1989), p. 28.Google Scholar

9. ‘Class Wars’, Panorama, BBC TV, 25 11 1991, produced by Kirby-Green, Francesca.Google Scholar

10. Lawton, Denis, ed., The Education Reform Act: Choice and Control (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), p. 32.Google Scholar See also Pring, , op. cit., note 8, p. 70, 26–8;Google Scholar and Lawton, Denis, Education, Culture, and the National Curriculum (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), p. 47.Google Scholar

11. Lawton, , op. cit., p. 33–4.Google Scholar

12. Hofkins, Diane, ‘Exceptions Prove Clarke's Rule’, Times Educational Supplement, 27 12 1991, p. 2.Google Scholar

13. Davis, David, ‘The Education Reform Bill: Tory Class Legislation’, Theatre and Education Journal, No. 1 (09 1988), p. 7.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 6.

15. Pring, , op. cit., note 8, p. 65–6.Google Scholar

16. Roche, Charmaine, ‘Crisis in Education’, SCYPT Journal, No. 20 (Autumn 1990), p. 15.Google Scholar

17. Ibid.

18. Lawton, , op. cit., note 10, p. 48.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 42.

20. George, Vic and Wilding, Paul, Ideology and Social Welfare (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 121.Google Scholar (The four respective positions are termed: 1, anti-collectivism: essentially complete reliance on free market principles; 2, reluctant collectivism: free market principles with some state intervention; 3, Fabian socialism: state regulation as a vital mechanism in curbing the inequality engendered by the free market; and 4, Marxism: total rejection of a free market and implementation of nationalization.)

21. In the 1980s there were also several instances of Manpower Services Commission (MSC) funding of companies based on their role as instigator of (educational) training initiatives. However, this partnership often led to sharp political differences (and sudden closures), owing to the insistence on certain conditions of operation by the MSC in its capacity as a government-sponsored agency. Points of contention included low pay – undermining Equity minimum levels – and the refusal to allow treatment of social or political material that might in some implicit way question government policy. There are also instances of commercial sponsorship, usually in the form of small donations, though on the whole this is not a form of funding that is seriously sought because of the problems it raises of compromise, and because TIE generally strives to be seen as part of the broader public's right to arts and education services. There are, of course, companies who receive major commercial sponsorship to promote material relating to the sponsor's product. Molecule Theatre, for example, receives massive funds from the oil company BP to mount national tours in large commercial theatres of science-based programmes. Finally, some YPT companies have either initiated or been commissioned to do one-off projects covering issues of immediate concern to certain agencies: for example, several health authorities have recently funded programmes on AIDS.

22. Beckett, Francis, ‘Sponsorship in Education’, in Shaw, Roy, ed., The Spread of Sponsorship (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books, 1993), p. 64.Google Scholar

23. Morton, David, letter to the writer, 20 02 1992.Google Scholar

24. Davis, , op. cit., note 13, p. 8.Google Scholar

25. Bolton, Gavin, ‘Although – a Response to The Arts 5–16’, NATD Broadsheet, VII, No. 3 (Winter 1990), p. 9.Google Scholar

26. Jeffs, Tony and Smith, Mark, eds., ‘Introduction’, Youth Work (Basingstoke: Macmillan Educational, 1987), p. 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. National Ministerial Conferences for the Youth Service, Towards a Core Curriculum – the Next Step (Leicester: National Youth Bureau, 1990), p. 4, 16, 18–19.Google Scholar

28. Taylor, Tony, letter to the writer, 18 03 1992.Google Scholar

29. Op. cit., note 27, p. 6, 7, 21, 22.

30. Taylor, op. cit., note 28.

31. Ibid.

32. Feldberg, , op. cit., note 2, p. 7–8.Google Scholar

33. Op. cit., note 27, p. 22.