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'I see my role as a teacher as an adventure maker'
Anna Newell Artistic Director, Centre for Excellence in the Creative and Performing Arts NI
An Interdisciplinary Arts Programme, Queen's University, Belfast
Just a few weeks ago, a friend was asking me what I would do if I didn’t do what I do. In talking through the various and often bizarre options (wedding planner, organiser of group holidays/short breaks, events management), I realised that they were all versions of what I do now and what I love doing but which I hadn’t ever put a name on. Mostly, I’ve realised, I’m an Adventure Maker. And that’s how I approach and why I embrace the immersive experience as a key educational arena.
I was a freelance theatre director for 16 years, creating a wide and eclectic range of projects and performances with community and professional companies; and for the last two I’ve been the Artistic Director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Creative and Performing Arts at Queen’s University Belfast.
When the University set up my CETL(NI), they made one very radical decision that both influenced the journey that the project would take and that struck a chord for innovation that was the beginning of the tune that the project is still singing. As the programme was about expanding the provision for professional arts practitioners to come in and work with the students in an interdisciplinary creative practical way, the University decided that their CETL would, uniquely I think, have an Artistic Director; and that this post would be set up so that they would recruit a professional practitioner to create the vision for this programme of work.
Coming from the professional arts world, I was already completely sold on the notion of the immersive experience and its ability to engage, inspire and transform. By this I mean I would find myself in a room with a group of people and know that four (or if we were very lucky, five) weeks later, people would pay to see what they have created where previously there was nothing. And that the journey from the starting point to the end point of these experiences was always challenging, invigorating, compelling, and – at its very best – exhilarating.
On taking up my post I set about devising, organising and delivering a whole range of these sorts of experiences as well as programmes that worked to a longer time frame. Initial experiments took the form of several “lock-yourself-in-a-room” interdisciplinary performance projects – two intensive weeks of devising, skills development and ensemble building with students from a variety of arts disciplines working with several professional practitioners to create a final performance piece. Projects included: ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘As Close As You Get to Being There’ and ‘How to disappear.’
These experiences were extra-curricular and students very much voted in with their feet – in fact, with the most recent project we had a waiting list of students wanting to give up two weeks of their holidays to participate in one of these projects – a project that would not have any impact on their degree marks at all. Why? Because many of them had felt disengaged and uninspired wandering from one big anonymous class to another and they were hungry for a more intensive, challenging collaborative experience.
Coming from a non-academic background, the most overwhelming task I was given on day one was to set up a new interdisciplinary arts MA. I won’t go into details here as to the long and continually changing discussions we had on the way to create the model that is currently running, but I was keen for it to be bold in its design, to be lyrical in its description and to have immersive experience at its heart.
Beliefs about immersive experience in performing arts
In all the projects described above there had been an underlying ethos which I brought with me on taking up the Artistic Director’s post. They embody the following set of beliefs about the nature of immersive experience.
That the greatest learning happens when there is an absolute level of rigour and an absolute level of playfulness happily co-existing in the same space.
The students work long, hard hours on these projects and structures are created to enable them to push beyond their expectations of themselves physically, intellectually, emotionally and creatively, as individuals and as a group. However, what an educational researcher who observed ‘How to Disappear’ was most struck by, was the amount of laughter in the room.
That the notion of a challenge, a voyage, a journey, a risk-taking enterprise, a saying goodbye to certainties and jumping in at the deep end – is thrilling, inspiring, engagement and transformative. And that as the catalyst, facilitator, leader for the immersive experience, if you aren’t thrilled, inspired, engaged and looking for transformation, the experience won’t be all it can be.
When asking visiting artists to create their Adventures for the MA, I explicitly invite them to experiment with something that is as exciting and ground-breaking for them as it should be for the students. Much of the feedback from the artists has been about the discoveries they have made and how stimulating they find the Adventure structure.
That some kind of finishing ritual is necessary to complete the experience: whether it’s something to work towards or simply something that indicates that the experience is over (that motivates people to work towards)
And so each of the immersive experiences have a final “thing” – a performance, a talk, an open rehearsal, a presentation, a communication with folks outside the experience about the experience. Similarly the facilitator/leader/catalyst needs to ritualise the sense of beginning, of the initial gathering. This can be as simple as having a definite “welcome”/ “your mission, should you choose to accept it, is” moment with everyone who will be involved in the process gathered in the same room. When the participants walk into the room, if there’s material up on the walls already, even if it’s just empty pages waiting to be filled (with headings, pictures or without) or some images, or some music playing or chairs set out in a particular way, it adds to this sense of the adventure beginning. Both at the beginning and the end, the giving of objects can help this ritual – whether that’s a blank notebook, an empty box to be filled, whatever might be appropriate to the project. You’ll see that the we’ll be using objects in the short interactive sessions that we’ve book-ended this conference with – and that there’s a coherence and a meaning to these objects and how we’re using them.
That being bold and lyrical when naming projects entices, intrigues, excites…….it marks them out as different and gives people permission to behave differently
That feeling that you’d achieved something at the end of a process as a group and as an individual that you couldn’t imagine achieving at the beginning gives an extraordinary rush of confidence-giving adrenalin that puts you on the threshold of future possibilities like nothing else that I know.
That passion for possibilities is essential and the role of the leader / facilitator is to create the spaces and situations in which things can emerge and happen.
That if you run downhill fast enough and with enough belief, you will take off.
Immersive adventures
And so I set about creating experiences that embody these ideas and beliefs. I call them Adventures and I have developed two adventure-based modules: ‘Adventures in Interdisciplinarity’ and ‘Further Adventures in Interdisciplinarity’. Each module involves a set of three Adventures: immersive two day encounters catalysed and facilitated by an eclectic range of visiting professional artists.
Very simply, this is how the Adventures work: the 11-strong student group (which includes 4 students from other arts MAs who are doing the workshops on a non-credit-bearing basis) meet with the visiting artists on a Friday lunchtime and by the end of Saturday they have created a short informal performance or an installation or a presentational pitch or a ‘whatever’ and people come along and take a look. The audience is always fairly intimate but is also an eclectic mix of family, friends, University staff and folk who have just happened upon the leaflets with which we publicise the events.
The Adventures are charged, experimental, unknown spaces where our students don’t know that they can’t do – rather than spaces where the conversation and thinking is continually framed by “what do you want me to answer/say/do/make?” Deliberately, Adventures aren’t directly assessed. What is assessed is students’ reflections on their experience and their engagement with it and what they say they have learnt through the experience.
A “body of evidence” is gathered to illustrate the journey of learning that the students have undertaken – they are asked to contribute to a moderated online discussion forum, to keep a Critical Incident Log, to put together a piece of research-led reflection inspired by the Adventures (this can be presented in essay or practical form) and then to undergo a final interview/mini-viva. It is on this “body of evidence” that they are assessed.
Student feedback has confirmed again and again the creative liberation that not assessing them directly in or at the end of the immersive experience engenders. Examples of feedback illustrate how these experiences affect participants.
‘Where have i been all this time? i have found this whole process of the adventures to be akin to the turning up of a light that had got somewhat dimmed in the intervening years since I was a bright young thing and going to be the 2nd female PM. I love the fact that i find myself listening, looking, moving, feeling life differently’.
‘This semester has gone so fast and I've realised that I enjoy collaboration a lot more than I thought I did. Even simple little things ... I remember sitting at the table when we were making up haikus and needing the perfect one syllable word. As soon as the question was out of my mouth, about 3 people at once started suggesting words I could use. I realised being precious with your work or defensive over its authorship in that sort of setting is only going to work against you. The joy of ensemble art! What I've also come to realise is that this course is more of a lifestyle than a degree. Particularly over the last month, a lot of things I've seen or heard in everyday life have dominoed into a line of thoughts connected with framing a photograph, or the value of a sound, or what is signified by falling through a door. And I have to scramble to find a piece of paper so I can use that thought to get marks!! (And you thought it was to expand my mind...)’
‘It was brilliant. I’ve never really been involved in any project like this before’
‘It was an adventure in the truest sense of the word. Exploring the unknown.’
‘Great. Scary. Really steep learning curve’
‘scary and exciting and challenging – a really engaging experience’
‘Drama. Challenge. All of it really absorbing’
‘really fascinating’
‘The level of expertise condensed and imparted in such a few hours was inspirational’
‘working as a creative group was fantastic and the pressure cooker timeline was great!’
‘it was a whirlwind of picking up new skills’
‘it has been the best experience of my whole degree’
‘I feel I have discovered a different side of me. It has helped me grow in confidence and taught me endless amounts of things’
‘With every new day, I became more and more overwhelmed with the rehearsals; at times I felt I was going to explode with enthusiasm’
‘This process has gone far beyond anything I could have wished for in approaching a new, unique and refreshing way of performing’
A final thought
I’ve often been asked by staff from other universities – and from within my own University – how I got away with naming our modules as adventures. The long answer is that I felt that I wanted the names of the modules to indicate that they were different and new, that I wanted a lyricism of description that would set the scene for an extraordinary educational encounter, that I wanted to intrigue both students and onlookers. The short answer is that, not coming through an academic route I didn’t know that I couldn’t name and create these sorts of spaces. The point I’m making is that my not knowing but being prepared to embark upon an Adventure into the unknown (as I am asking my students to do) is what’s key. This job, this post, these possibilities are all a great big Adventure for me. And that’s why I plan to keep doing it.
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