Grounded in 10 years of critical literacy work in Puerto Rico, the authors engage readers creatively, to share key events in both our experiences as local teachers and as theatre activists in Puerto Rico. Our long-term purpose has been to explore new creative approaches to doing educational research and pedagogies that rupture traditional colonial…

Despite the attention drawn to the plastic crisis by the media and environmental campaigns, much of the practice around single-use plastic has remained unchanged. It appears that, although many know the correct position to assume regarding the issue, the 'talk' does not necessarily translate into action. This incongruity can be explained with…

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based human rights organisation, has significantly improved working conditions for migrant farmworkers on large-scale produce farms in the United States, in part, through its adaptation of applied theatre strategies used in its worker-to-worker popular education programme. The farmworker-devised…

Social change develops over time, but it begins with individual and collective actions by real people. In the current American atmosphere of resistance, activism, and art-ivism, what are the tools that artists can employ to motivate audience members to act? This article illuminates the call to action, an essential element of persuasive speaking…

This article brings into relation critical perspectives and practical tactics from a range of different fields--performance studies, visual art practice, pedagogy and educational theory, and activism and community organising--in order to create some space for re-imagining what might be possible within the dynamics of the Higher Education…

This article proposes a new conceptual approach to disability and performance through a contribution that comes entirely from outside the disciplines; a re-theorisation of Gibson's [1979. "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception". Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates] theory of affordances. Drawing on three visual ethnographies…

The arts and disability are still considered contradictory terms in Spain. However, over the last few years, various disabled artists have called for more opportunities for their professionalisation and for the recognition of their creative potential. The objective here is to analyse them and to reflect on their artistic and political…

For the past year, we have been co-facilitating Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) workshops across Pittsburgh, tailored specifically toward local educators and educational activists. The overarching intentions of these workshops were twofold: (a) to cultivate educators' understanding of and response to how power and privilege operate in educational…

Following the devastating result of the May 2015 general election in the UK, the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home organised "Compassion is dissent: Manifesto Slam." It put out an open call for participants, asking them to bring a three-minute manifesto as means of admission to the event. Here, the Institute showcases…

Social Activism Through Theater" chronicles the author's first full year as a teaching artist in New York City, including the launch of National Queer Theater and its inaugural show, Speechless, as well as his experiences investigating film and storytelling with teenagers at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy.

This paper describes The Freedom Theatre's Freedom Bus initiative and its use of Playback Theatre for community mobilisation and cultural activism within Occupied Palestine. Utilising a conflict transformation perspective, conventional dialogue-oriented initiatives are contrasted against interventions that pursue concientisation and alliance…

The article articulates an educational motto--expressed in the title--found in a "prototypical narrative" of social youth work carried out by activists in Copenhagen in the 1990s. This way of modeling pedagogical practice is first outlined as different from the standardizing approach dominant in science. As a prototypical narrative, the…

The Posbolonian Uniform is a creative, artistic and performative response, undertaken as a criticism and opposition to the losses of democratic freedoms that have occurred in Spain recently. It is a bid by two university instructors for the use of artistic tools, specifically performance art, as a means of social transformation in their academic…

To inform students about global violence against women and to empower them to take action, the authors developed an interdisciplinary course focused on experiential learning and theatre education. Their article discusses the development of the course; the implementation of active learning strategies to develop critical thinking, empathy, and…

This article contends that every chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts must advocate for arts education. The arts need a voice in power, say people in the field, someone in the corridors of influence to argue the benefits of teaching the nation's students about classical and jazz music, ballet, and sculpture. With No Child Left Behind…