Making Theatre In The Midst Of Austerity is a one-day symposium on theatre, poverty and inequality at the Martin Harris Centre of Music and Drama, University of Manchester on November 4.
A briefing released by Oxfam in January reported the concentration of power within an elite minority is posing threats to social security. In the UK, an economic policy of austerity has featured cuts in public spending at levels unprecedented in the post-war period, as well as an increasingly punitive social welfare system.
How are theatre-makers responding to this moment? What methods and collaborations are being developed, and what new approaches are needed? Where might these come from? What theatre initiatives exist in sites affected by economic inequality? How can artists working in these localities operate responsively and creatively, recognising their complex, diverse and vital dimensions and resisting a ‘deficit’ model that constructs communities as lacking or in need?
The symposium will bring together theatre-makers, researchers and communities to share examples of practice and research that respond to economic inequality.