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In collaboration with the Matilda Centre, we are developing an innovative, inclusive program of pretend play that builds foundational social and emotional skills to improve wellbeing in our children. We will harness the power of play to equip children, parents and educators with lifelong skills.

123Play is a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together expertise in young people’s wellbeing with creative and playful pedagogy. We have coalesced two leading research centres at The University of Sydney��to drive this work.��.

Academic leads: Robyn Ewing, Michael Anderson, Maree Teesson, Olivia Karaolis, Amanda Niland, Fotini Vasilopoulos.

Affiliated partner: the Matilda Centre.

A community-devised performing arts workshop and public performance for young people. ActBack builds resilience in the face of recent disasters including floods and COVID-19 and teaches skills in disaster recovery to participant young people.��Young people in Hunters Hill have experienced multiple, recent major disasters, including floods and COVID-19. This drama-based process helps them process and respond in a supportive environment.

This project was funded by the , through the Children and Young People Wellbeing Recovery Initiative.

This area of work aims to explore and advocate for the fundamental role of arts and culture at all stages of disaster management and at all levels of operation in the mitigation and adaptation to climate risks and impacts. It will consolidate existing knowledge and build evidence for policy and inclusion across the disaster ecosystem. It will build on current practice, and develop resources to position the role of culture and the arts as a vital contributor to climate resilience and its impacts on our communities’ wellbeing.��

Academic leads:��Claire Hooker with Michael Anderson and Natasha Beaumont.

Affiliated partners:����.

Leading an innovative process of teaching and learning. Investigating the outcomes of a multi-arts professional learning program on EAL/D teachers, learners, and teaching artists. A pilot program last year saw schools in high EAL/D and low SEO areas at both primary and secondary levels work with dedicated Teaching Artists.

The program draws on years of research into the practices and benefits of Drama Rich Pedagogy and its relationship to Deep Literacy, which you can read about in Robyn Ewing’s book (pdf, 920.4KB) on the topic.

The program welcomes enquiries from schools that may wish to participate. Learn more.

Academic Leads:��Professor Emerita Robyn Ewing, Dr Kathy��Ruston, Eliza Oliver.

Investigating the value of theatre for young people globally. This study includes an evidence gap map and qualitative report produced in partnership with .��

Academic Leads: A/Prof Kelly Freebody,��Professor Michael Anderson, Eliza Oliver.

This project is in collaboration with Barking Gecko Theatre Company, and related to the work we do with Bell Shakespeare.

If theatre is an interweaving of memory and��liveness, and learning is constructed in negotiation and dialogue, theatre education offers a��powerful place to encounter the unexpected, to extend horizons of expectations and consider��where we are positioned in the world.

It is material and ephemeral, and recognizes that meaning is��made not only in the symbols, metaphors and narratives of drama, but between spaces and places,��in the gaps and the silences of reflection as well as in the movement of and activity of practice��(Nicholson, 2011, p.) ��

This research is investigating the following questions from the participant��children’s point of view: Does theatre matter to children? If so, how? What happens when young��children are given access to three live theatre performances and related pre- and post-performance��activities over a two-year period? What do they: wonder about? Imagine? Hope for? Remember? ��

Academic leads:��Professor Emerita Robyn Ewing AM and Professor Michael Anderson, in��collaboration with��

Bell Shakespeare and the CREATE Centre, University are undertaking a multi-phased research project.

This began with an initial introductory scoping of the research in Australia and internationally about the impact of engaging young people with Shakespeare and the nature of their engagement.

The current phase of the proposed project focuses on a multi-site case study of Bell Shakespeare’s programs in��regional/remote schools including live��performances and tailored artists��in residence programs for teachers and students.��This phase will investigate what happens when young people in remote NSW schools have access to Bell Shakespeare’s in-school residencies and Player performances and related activities from the participant young people’s and teachers’ perspectives.��Data is being gathered from student focus groups; teacher and principal interviews;��and participants’ arts-informed responses.

Academic leads: Natasha Beaumont, Associate Professor Kelly Freebody, Professor Michael Anderson, Professor Robyn Ewing.

A collaboration between the University of Sydney and the University of Auckland, the Creative Schools Initiative is developing a robust index measure of creative environments in schools using quantitative data. The Creative Index draws on 11 skills and capacities taken from a review of the literature of creativity in schools. An interactive ‘creative environment’ report is provided to schools and supports developing the environment for creativity in the school culture and curriculum.

Academic leads:��Michael Anderson, Peter O’Connor, Kelly Freebody, Paul Ginns, Marianne Mansour.

Find out more about the Creative Schools Initiative.��

This project utilises inclusive pedagogy that honours the languages and cultures of the students and their agency in the learning process. It promotes translanguaging and a creative pedagogy that creates space to express symbolic understandings of students’ culture and worlds.

Identity texts are any products of students’ creative work that connect to the students' culture and community and disrupt an English only transmission pedagogy whereby students are viewed as blank slates (Freire, 1975).

They offer an accessible, focused way to draw attention to “essential aspects of the link between identity affirmation, societal power relations, and literacy engagement” (Cummins et al., 2015: p. 556) and, importantly for this project, they help bring the voices and languages of multilingual students to the fore as in this example:

Oute Alofa ia oe
Was once said to me,
I grew a tiny leaf,
But it died right after I tried to pronounce it

– Year 8 student

The project commenced several years ago. We engage with primary and secondary teachers in professional dialogue and reflection and focus on identifying the literacy and wellbeing needs of their students (Timperley, 2011). We then outline strategies to help students use their home languages in English lessons and share examples of quality literature that employs translanguaging to support students to develop authentic identity texts (Cummins, 1981; Cummins 1986; Cummins, 2000; Cummins and Early, 2011).

The research data is contextualised within the socio-spatial frames of Lefebvre (1991) and Soja (1980), and the concept of Li Wei’s (2011) ‘Translanguaging Space’. These spatial theories are used to understand how the everyday practices of school and classrooms are shaped by prevailing monolingual ideologies and how ‘thirdspace’ practices can challenge deficit views, support student agency and give voice to symbolic representations of self and culture.����

Academic leads: Dr��, The University of Sydney; Dr Janet Dutton, Macquarie University

Resources

• Dutton, J., D'Warte, J., Rossbridge, J., & Rushton, K. (2018).��Tell me your story: confirming identity and engaging writers in the middle years.��Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teachers' Association (PETAA).
• Dutton, J., & Rushton, K. (2018).��.��English in Australia, 53(1), 5-14.
• Dutton, J., & Rushton, K. (2018). Poets in the making: Confirming identity in English.��Scan, 37(3), 1-12.

Investigating wellbeing, transferable skills, and perceived employability for young people following multi-arts workshops on the far south coast of NSW.��

Academic Leads:��Eliza Oliver, Professor Michael Anderson, Professor Emerita Robyn Ewing.

A research-led practice exploring how people, particularly children, relate to the civic condition, and the ways in which ‘play’ can be integrated into the fabric of everyday life. Our projects explore ways that art in public places – and urban design more broadly – can become increasingly integrated, inclusive and interactive creative spaces.��It is our goal to challenge the ways a permanent public artwork might be encountered in daily life. Developing major works of playable sculpture, we aim to expand the role of art in contributing to current definitions of ‘play’.

In this "playable sculpture" project, infants, toddlers and children will become the architects of their own playscape. It is our aim that the children’s encounters with their play space will reveal to us valuable insights into their perception and behaviour with environments and art objects. Through this research we will be able to deduce which physical determinants of sculptural shapes affect children’s decisions, actions, interactions, feelings and behaviours. This will be tested across key demographics, primarily age and gender categories.

Academic leads: Sanné Mestrom, artist and academic; Melissa Loughnan, curator, consultant and director of��; and Anna Ciliberto, director,��.

An evaluation of a series of site-specific drama skills workshops undertaken with young people on the NSW South Coast after the bushfires. In partnership with the Family Place. The workshops will culminate in public performances for the communities.

Lead researcher:��Thomas De Angelis, Professor Michael Anderson, Professor Robyn Ewing.

A teacher professional learning program developed by Sydney Theatre Company in partnership with the University of Sydney and Professor Robyn Ewing AM. The program aims to enable teachers to develop the confidence and expertise to use drama-rich pedagogy with literature to��enhance learners’ English and literacy��outcomes. Each teacher works with a Teaching Artist��to embark on a unique co-mentoring partnership.

Since 2009, more than 35,000 teachers and students have participated in the program. The program is currently being re-imagined and expanded into a new form, with a launch expected in 2025.

Download the full School Drama report (pdf, 6.9MB)

Drama program reimagines how we teach English - read more.

The Connected Program, also in partnership with Sydney Theatre Company, operates as a system on the same principles but for adults. This program helps��asylum seekers and those with��refugee��and migrant backgrounds, learn English and foster social connections. It uses imaginative stories and folktales to explore character, place and meaning.

Each year we host the , an event free and open to the public to hear from the most exciting practitioners of Shakespeare’s works. Previous lectures have been given by John Bell, Janine Watson, Kate Gaul and Kylie Bracknell. Each lecture is then edited into a book format and published, under the CREATE Papers banner.

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Run by Diversity Arts Australia (2019-2020), this is a contemplative workshop series for culturally and/or linguistically diverse artists and arts workers to imagine a future where cultural diversity is present at every level in the arts.

Find out more about .

In the face of an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, education can make the difference as to whether people embrace the challenges they are confronted with or whether they are defeated by them. And in an era characterised by a new explosion of scientific knowledge and a growing array of complex societal problems, it is appropriate that curricula should continue to evolve, perhaps in radical ways.

Understand them through their way of living and the circumstances of their lives … try to penetrate the psychology of different nations … endeavour to penetrate the psychology of persons around you toward whom you feel unsympathetic … attempt to experience what they experience (Chekhov, 1953).

If we can experience something through art, then we might be able to change our future, because experience engraves lessons on our heart through suffering, whereas speculation leaves us untouched (Sarah Kane, British playwright).

Academic leads: Dr Alison Grove O’Grady,��Thomas De Angelis.

Transforming Schools began as a project in 2017 to consider the “how” of school transformation.

Emerging from the books����and��,��the project now features more than 40 schools in long-term partnerships and several PhD, master's degree and honours students researching the how of transformation.

This work undertaken in partnership with����and not only researches transformation and the 4Cs��(creativity, critical reflection, communication, collaboration), but��investigates how schools throughout Australia are making it a reality.