The paper questions the link that policy-makers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the creative and cultural (C&C) sector. It identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector undermine this assumption and how the UK's policy formation process inhibits education and training (E&T) actors from…

The emerging sub-field of applied theater encompasses a wide range of pro-social 'alternative' theater practices, but it also refers to a discursive practice that seeks to reconcile the apparently contradictory claims of the politics of egalitarian redistribution and the politics of difference. The argument in this paper is that this emerging…

With the growing influence of social media on contemporary society, educators have to adapt to new ways of engaging students in the learning process. The use of iPod technologies, as part of this new breed of social media and associated gadgetry, offers fresh opportunities to enhance the student learning experience. As part of a research project…

Creativity is a term that has many interpretations yet is seen as crucial to the development of students in higher education. As part of a wider research project entitled "Podagogy" at the University of Wolverhampton, a number of individual projects were undertaken within the performing arts subjects. The focus of the projects was to…

This article explores the extent to which aspiring entrants to the performing arts industry have to develop both the forms of "vocational practice" employers require and "social capital" to enable them to operate effectively in external labour markets (i.e. contract-based and networked-generated work). It focuses on the work of…

The happy ending is that The Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah has arrived at a clear statement of aims and objectives, and the long story is the 20 years of theatre making within the field of theatre in education, involving moments of clarity followed by periods of complete confusion as to why we were doing what we were doing. The question which…

PALATINE, the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music, received dedicated HEFCE funding (2003-2004) to address issues surrounding graduate employability, particularly focusing on the distinctive features of the labour market in the performing arts and creative industries. In the world of the Arts, the job market is very…

For over ten years, London's National Theatre, under the banner of "Connections", has been commissioning ten professional playwrights per year, each to write a play for young people. The plays are workshopped and performed by secondary schools, colleges and youth theatres across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and are presented in a…

Recent research has shown that the UK's Advanced Apprenticeship Programme (AAP) struggles to develop the forms of "vocational practice", that is, a combination of knowledge, skill and judgement, employers are looking for in the creative and cultural sector. Employers' reluctance to get involved with the AAP does not mean that they are…

This article focuses on aspects of devising and staging a play written for a group of women prisoners. The project raised issues concerning the nature of community theatre in secure institutions. Arts work in a community context is often predicated on notions of intervention and transformation. A central question underpinning the project concerned…

Discusses how in the United Kingdom there is currently a lot of concern about "evidence-based practice" in education. Notes that educational researchers and teachers are being asked to demonstrate that certain educational experiences result in certain outcomes, preferably outcomes which match the given education aims, intentions and…

Explains that criminal justice agencies have acknowledged that imaginative and engaging styles of education are crucial to rehabilitative work with offenders. Investigates the ways in which a drama-based cognitive-behavioral program in the United Kingdom for violent offenders can construct and review its theoretical approach through practice.…

The article takes as its starting point my recent ethnography of the Welsh National Opera Company, and the forthcoming monograph "Everyday Arias: making opera work". In the course of that work I revisited the theme of performance: the ethnography of performance and the performance of ethnography. I discuss briefly the everyday work of…

The needs of the user of theater arts resources are examined in three articles describing the types of services and materials required by amateur theater groups, television researchers, and secondary schools. Ways in which libraries, archives, and museums can meet these requirements are suggested. (CLB)

Issues concerning arts in higher education are considered in discussion papers, group reports, and recommendations from the fifth seminar of the Leverhulme Programme of the Study into the Future of Higher Education. In "The Issues," Peter Brinson and Ken Robinson suggest that the arts are vitally important for the quality of national…