ANNA SEYMOUR PhD

Anna Seymour PhD, PFHEA HCPC registered Dramatherapist is Emeritus Professor of Dramatherapy at the University of Roehampton, London and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is Visiting Professor of Dramatherapy at the University of Osijek, Croatia, honorary member of the Societa Professionale di Dramaterapia (Italy) and an international trainer and consultant across the world. She has a background in professional theatre with and for working class communities and was associated with more than 30 shows, devising, directing and performing work. As an academic she has taught theatre praxis and given lecture series in the Drama departments of several leading UK universities including the Universities of Manchester and Birmingham. Former Editor of the British Association of Dramatherapists peer reviewed journal, Dramatherapy, she is Senior Series Editor, Dramatherapy: approaches, relationships, critical ideas published by Routledge / Taylor and Francis  

ABSTRACT 

WHERE DO YOU STAND? THOUGHTS ON ART AS TOOL OF TRANSFORMATION  

Across the world, arts education is disappearing from schools’ curricula and universities are closing down departments devoted to the arts and humanities. Why? In examining this phenomenon, we must address the fundamental political and cultural shifts that have resulted in the arts potentially becoming once more a preserve of the social elite.   

Yet we have been through several decades where definitions of what constitutes „the arts” has been expanded, where there has been a seeming „democratisation” of the arts and new roles established for the arts as a means of healing and catalysing change in communities.  

So where do we stand now with the uses of art that have been variously described as „a weapon”, „a mirror”, „resistance”, „outsider”, „socially engaged” etc etc etc etc  

This paper will offer thoughts on how we may think politically about the arts as expressivity, healing and cultural activism.  

For each of us who engages in artistic practice that we wish to share with a „public” in whatever form, there is a responsibility to continually interrogate our praxis in order to contribute to the potentiality of „art as a tool of social transformation”.