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Staff Development
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Dignity, Diversity and Equality

Understanding Difference

Diversity and Equality have been working with Staff Development and the Centre for Global Perspectives on a project to raise awareness about the nature of difference. A group of professional actors have also been engaged to devise a piece of theatre that reflects issues found within the university. Using a technique known as Forum Theatre, various scenes will be presented, providing a starting point to explore what is involved in Understanding Difference.

Forum Theatre

What is Forum theatre style training

Forum Theatre is an interactive theatre form devised in the early 1970s by Augusto Boal. An audience is shown a short play in which the characters explore an issue. There is opportunity for the audience to stop the play, ask questions and brief each of the actors about changes to their character’s behaviour. The play is then restarted, incorporating the audience’s suggestions. This allows the audience to view the impact of different behaviour on individuals

Forum theatre is often used in the place of role play as many people are reluctant to get involved in role play, often concentrating more on their fear of looking foolish than learning from the experience. Forum Theatre leaves the performing to the professionals, allowing the participants to engage fully with the issues

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The Benefits

  • Script that mimics real life situations within the University. Thereby allowing audience members to experience the emotions involved and the impact of behaviour on individuals
  • Difficult subjects played out in a safe environment the audience/participants can then explore changes in behaviour/attitude and again see these worked out before them.
  • An opportunity to explore the subtleties of diversity and equality and explore the sensitive and multifaceted nature of issues that many people can relate to.
  • Forum theatre allows reflection and debate/questioning, ensuring that participants are engaged.
  • The session will also ensure that participants leave with a better understanding of the practical implications of the Dignity, diversity and equality policy and codes of practice that support this within BU.
  • Scenarios can be used as examples where Equality Impact Assessment would be affective at ensuring non discrimination. Sessions have the potential to end with a brief overview of Equality Impact Assessments and how the fit into what they have learnt from the session.
The Aims

  • Allow participants to openly discuss and debate diversity and equality issues in a safe and supporting environment.
  • Encourage staff to consider diversity and equality as a real life issue and an integral part of the decision making process at BU, as opposed to something that needs to be tacked on afterwards.
  • Give staff the skills to be objective when managing diversity and equality issues in the workplace.
  • Encourage staff to consider the real life impacts of the Equality Impact Assessment process, to avoid them being mistaken for a simple bureaucratic, tick box exercise.

Facilitated by Tim Schuler

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