Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre

Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art engages with a diversity of contexts, locations and arts forms – including theatre, music and fine art – and brings together theoretical, political and practice-based perspectives on the question of 'evidence' in relation to participatory arts practice in social contexts. This collection is a unique contribution to the field, focusing on one of the vital concerns for a growing and developing set of arts and research practices. It asks us to consider evidence not only in terms of methodology but also in the light of the ideological, political and pragmatic implications of that methodology.
In Part One, Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe reflect on evidence and impact in the participatory arts in relation to recurring conceptual and methodological motifs. These include issues of purpose and obliquity; the relationship between evidence and knowledge; intrinsic and instrumental impacts, and the value of participatory research.
Part Two explores the diversity of perspectives, contexts and methodologies in examining what it is possible to know, say and evidence about the often complex and intimate impact of participatory arts.
Part Three brings together case studies in which practitioners and practice-based researchers consider the frustrations, opportunities and successes they face in addressing the challenge to produce evidence for the impact of their practice.

Nick Rowe is associate professor in Arts and Health at York St John University, UK. Publications include Playing the Other: Dramatising Personal Narratives in Playback Theatre (2007).

Michael Balfour is Head of School and Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Michael's research explores applied theatre and performance work in a range of social contexts. Michael has authored or edited 8 books, and over 50 book chapters and academic journal articles. His most recent publications include Performing Arts in Prisons: Creative Perspectives (2019), and Applied Theatre: Understanding Change (2018) with Kelly Freebody, Michael Anderson and Michael Finneran. He is the series editor of the Methuen Drama applied theatre book series, that brings together leading international scholars to engage with and advance key themes in the field of applied theatre.

Matthew Reason is Professor of Theatre and Performance at York St John University, UK. Publications include Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance (2006), The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children's Experiences of Theatre (2010) and co-edited with Dee Reynolds Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Contexts (2012).

Sheila Preston is Head of Performing Arts at the University of East London, UK. Previously she was a senior lecturer in Applied Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She co-edited with Tim Prentki The Applied Theatre Reader (Routledge, 2009).