in 2016 the National Theatre produced a
new play it was written by the
documentary playwright chilleen’s la vie
and directed by Nicolas Kent and it was
called another world losing our children
to Islamic state and I saw the plane
when I was in London attending the World
Congress on counterterrorism now the
World Congress is a two-day event of
talks and conferences on matters of
national security of global and domestic
terrorism of cybersecurity and policing
now I’m a theatre director and I mean
University academic and I teach drama
and you don’t often get people like me
attending conferences like that but I am
interested in the intersections between
theater government policy and education
and I’d like to share some research with
you for the last few years I’ve been
researching the role of theater in
education in countering youth
radicalization so I was at the
conference for research purposes and it
was really interesting and learnt a
great deal about threats to national
security and new pay counterterrorism
policies but it was missing something it
was missing the human element so I went
to see Julian Slava’s play another world
losing our children to Islamic state
explores the reasons why young people
become radicalized why they leave the
relative safety of Europe to join
jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq and
the play paints a complex and nuanced
account and offers no easy answers and
it’s also a verbatim play and the author
had interviewed politicians and
religious leaders and NGOs as well as
mothers from a community center in
molenbeek Brussels whose children had
joined Isis in Syria and she’d also
interviewed four Muslim students and I
should say that these Muslim students
were not radicalized in any way and they
were not terrorists
but their stories told a good deep
anxiety about what it is to be Muslim in
modern-day Britain because sometimes
carrying a rucksack on London transport
is enough to warrant undue attention
because post 9/11 and the Global War on
Terror we have seen an aggressive
anti-muslim sentiment expressed in the
media the politics and in ideology and
young people have brought the brunt of
these hostilities now to be used at any
moment in time is to invite a degree of
suspicion from Punk’s tea to rockers to
air to the the youth of the London riots
now I’m not here to say to you that
terrorism isn’t real and the current
threat level is severe for good reason
we have seen devastating and truly
heartbreaking attacks across Europe and
in the UK in Paris London Barcelona
Manchester the pain for families
involved in these attacks is truly
unimaginable I have a friend and her son
was in Manchester at the night of the
arena bombings and he was lucky he
survived but it’s fair to say that the
events of that night will stay with him
probably for the rest of his life I’m
not here to trivialize the threat level
to the UK it’s real but the way that we
talk about terrorism particularly with
young people is counterproductive and
unhelpful and part of that problem is
the UK counterterrorism strategy prevent
so in 2015 the government introduced a
statutory duty to prevent the need for
young people to being drawn into
terrorism now prevent delivery sits
within local authorities and the duty
extends to schools and colleges as well
as prisons and healthcare settings for
schools prevents it as a safeguarding
issue much in the way it’s the same way
that we might deal with a bullying or
sexual acts
rotation but there is a key difference
in the way that we talk about terrorism
than other safeguarding concerns because
when we’re addressing bullying or sexual
exploitation say the child or the young
person is seen at risk and it’s our job
as educators and as adults to mitigate
to reduce the risk but when we talk
about terrorism sometimes the young
person is not at risk sometimes the
young person is the risk now it’s the
criticism our prevent is not that we
have a counterterrorism strategy it’s
because a language described to use to
describe the duty disproportionately
targets Muslim yes the adoption of a
religious signifier is a jab in some
circumstances and signifies religious
extremism and I’m not alone in thinking
this rights watch UK and Home Affairs
Select Committee have called for an
independent review and yes there have
been cases high-profile cases of young
people leaving the UK and Europe to join
jihadist groups abroad and there is also
the case of that far-right extremism is
growing across Europe but if we really
want to stop to prevent young people
from being drawn into terrorism we have
to change the conversation and we have
to stop seeing our young people as a
risk and we need to include them in the
conversation and we need to find better
ways of delivering the prevent duty and
one way is through theatre but why
theatre well first start were good at it
from from the ancient Greeks to
Shakespeare to the modern-day theatre
provides a much needed space to explore
challenging and complex ideas difficult
ideas madea’s slaughtered her children
Edith murdered his father and married
mother in theatre brothers kill brothers
and fathers sacrifice daughters Hamlet
says that theater is a mirror to nature
because it shows us the best of humanity
yes and it’s very worse but it’s more
than that the aesthetic qualities of
theatre allow for emotional empathy
understanding on a human level but the
framing of it as a theatrical event
provides distance critical and dialogic
distance the theatre critic Michael
Billington says a theatre provides
opportunities to speak truth to power
and this is where theatre comes in and
theater on education harnessing the
power of theater to enable children and
teachers to share in the meaning making
process it’s a socially active form and
is an established discipline it began in
the 1960s but the move towards prevent
focused work is relatively new and I’d
like to share with you the work of two
theatre companies reveal theatre are
based in North Staffordshire and their
first project game arm was initially a
community cohesion project it’s not as
play as search but a beast bacon drama
workshop and they using its theater and
roleplay and games and exercises and
conversation to explore themes of
extremism with young people they the aim
of the of the workshop is to change
perceptions because the first step in
countering radicalization is to deal
with prejudice whether these are
stereotypes about Islam and Christianity
or British identity and they one example
is that they use photographs and images
to show children that cultural and
religious stereotyping impacts
negatively on their communities and I’d
like to show an example from from one of
their workshops and in the next slide
you will see an image and it’s from it’s
not the actual photograph it’s a drawing
of a photograph
and there are some words added to the
photograph now some of you might find
that this drawing and the words
offensive upsetting challenging so a
please bear with me and I’ll explain so
in this drawing you can see a woman
she’s wearing a blue burka and she’s
pointing a good and the words say terror
attack level severe an attack is highly
likely for security reasons it’s now
time to ban the burqa now the first time
I saw this image I was in a school
watching the project with a group of
children and maybe like you I was
surprised I was shocked I didn’t know
what was looking at I guess though that
the image was saying something about
terrorism so would it change your
opinion if I told you that the drawing
is based on a real photograph and that
was taken some time ago the words they
were added later by a far-right group to
promote an anti-muslim message the the
woman in the figure in the drawing is
actually a real person and her name is
Lieutenant Colonel Malala Kaka and she’s
not a terrorist
she was the first female police officer
to graduate from Kandahar police station
in Afghanistan she was a fearless
spokesperson for female rights and she
was a mother the photographer
Lena Scelzi took the photograph of
Malala as a publicity image to promote
mallilie as a female police officer
because you don’t get that many female
police officers in Afghanistan it was a
positive image in 2008 the Taliban
assassinated mallilie she was shot and
murdered on her way to work and in front
of her son in 2014
far-right took up the image added the
words and posted on social media to
promote an anti-muslim message it’s a
very simple exercise but it shows that
bias and
prejudice affects how we see others an
ideology well an ideology distorts the
truth and that brings me to the next
company tapestry is a play by the
company the play house and it tells the
story of a couple of characters who are
put up in a riot and the riot is between
a far-right group called the young
Patriots and an Islamist group called
the circle of truth and because of the
riot the characters are kind of trapped
in a shop and they can’t leave so
they’re forced to speak to each other
and they find out this that the reasons
it took the young boy into the young
Patriots wanting a sense of identity
wanting to belong wanting to make sense
of his world wanting a future was
exactly the same as a young man who
would join the circle of truth there
were so many similarities between them
both reveal and the play has set up a
deliberate tension between far-right and
Islamist extremism because in theatre we
know that violence violence is not
produced in isolation violence manifests
in relation and in tension with other
causes now I’ve worked in theatre and
education for 30 years and I have seen
theatre changed lives
honestly it changes my life I’ve seen it
change lives but I’m not here to say
that theatre can offer a magic bullet
the problems of the world cannot be
solved by watching a play or taking part
in a drama workshop of course not but if
we want to talk to young people about
terrorism then we have to change the
conversation and we have to provide
space for young people to talk openly
and safely and without judgement and
theater well theatre can get us into the room thank you very much
new play it was written by the
documentary playwright chilleen’s la vie
and directed by Nicolas Kent and it was
called another world losing our children
to Islamic state and I saw the plane
when I was in London attending the World
Congress on counterterrorism now the
World Congress is a two-day event of
talks and conferences on matters of
national security of global and domestic
terrorism of cybersecurity and policing
now I’m a theatre director and I mean
University academic and I teach drama
and you don’t often get people like me
attending conferences like that but I am
interested in the intersections between
theater government policy and education
and I’d like to share some research with
you for the last few years I’ve been
researching the role of theater in
education in countering youth
radicalization so I was at the
conference for research purposes and it
was really interesting and learnt a
great deal about threats to national
security and new pay counterterrorism
policies but it was missing something it
was missing the human element so I went
to see Julian Slava’s play another world
losing our children to Islamic state
explores the reasons why young people
become radicalized why they leave the
relative safety of Europe to join
jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq and
the play paints a complex and nuanced
account and offers no easy answers and
it’s also a verbatim play and the author
had interviewed politicians and
religious leaders and NGOs as well as
mothers from a community center in
molenbeek Brussels whose children had
joined Isis in Syria and she’d also
interviewed four Muslim students and I
should say that these Muslim students
were not radicalized in any way and they
were not terrorists
but their stories told a good deep
anxiety about what it is to be Muslim in
modern-day Britain because sometimes
carrying a rucksack on London transport
is enough to warrant undue attention
because post 9/11 and the Global War on
Terror we have seen an aggressive
anti-muslim sentiment expressed in the
media the politics and in ideology and
young people have brought the brunt of
these hostilities now to be used at any
moment in time is to invite a degree of
suspicion from Punk’s tea to rockers to
air to the the youth of the London riots
now I’m not here to say to you that
terrorism isn’t real and the current
threat level is severe for good reason
we have seen devastating and truly
heartbreaking attacks across Europe and
in the UK in Paris London Barcelona
Manchester the pain for families
involved in these attacks is truly
unimaginable I have a friend and her son
was in Manchester at the night of the
arena bombings and he was lucky he
survived but it’s fair to say that the
events of that night will stay with him
probably for the rest of his life I’m
not here to trivialize the threat level
to the UK it’s real but the way that we
talk about terrorism particularly with
young people is counterproductive and
unhelpful and part of that problem is
the UK counterterrorism strategy prevent
so in 2015 the government introduced a
statutory duty to prevent the need for
young people to being drawn into
terrorism now prevent delivery sits
within local authorities and the duty
extends to schools and colleges as well
as prisons and healthcare settings for
schools prevents it as a safeguarding
issue much in the way it’s the same way
that we might deal with a bullying or
sexual acts
rotation but there is a key difference
in the way that we talk about terrorism
than other safeguarding concerns because
when we’re addressing bullying or sexual
exploitation say the child or the young
person is seen at risk and it’s our job
as educators and as adults to mitigate
to reduce the risk but when we talk
about terrorism sometimes the young
person is not at risk sometimes the
young person is the risk now it’s the
criticism our prevent is not that we
have a counterterrorism strategy it’s
because a language described to use to
describe the duty disproportionately
targets Muslim yes the adoption of a
religious signifier is a jab in some
circumstances and signifies religious
extremism and I’m not alone in thinking
this rights watch UK and Home Affairs
Select Committee have called for an
independent review and yes there have
been cases high-profile cases of young
people leaving the UK and Europe to join
jihadist groups abroad and there is also
the case of that far-right extremism is
growing across Europe but if we really
want to stop to prevent young people
from being drawn into terrorism we have
to change the conversation and we have
to stop seeing our young people as a
risk and we need to include them in the
conversation and we need to find better
ways of delivering the prevent duty and
one way is through theatre but why
theatre well first start were good at it
from from the ancient Greeks to
Shakespeare to the modern-day theatre
provides a much needed space to explore
challenging and complex ideas difficult
ideas madea’s slaughtered her children
Edith murdered his father and married
mother in theatre brothers kill brothers
and fathers sacrifice daughters Hamlet
says that theater is a mirror to nature
because it shows us the best of humanity
yes and it’s very worse but it’s more
than that the aesthetic qualities of
theatre allow for emotional empathy
understanding on a human level but the
framing of it as a theatrical event
provides distance critical and dialogic
distance the theatre critic Michael
Billington says a theatre provides
opportunities to speak truth to power
and this is where theatre comes in and
theater on education harnessing the
power of theater to enable children and
teachers to share in the meaning making
process it’s a socially active form and
is an established discipline it began in
the 1960s but the move towards prevent
focused work is relatively new and I’d
like to share with you the work of two
theatre companies reveal theatre are
based in North Staffordshire and their
first project game arm was initially a
community cohesion project it’s not as
play as search but a beast bacon drama
workshop and they using its theater and
roleplay and games and exercises and
conversation to explore themes of
extremism with young people they the aim
of the of the workshop is to change
perceptions because the first step in
countering radicalization is to deal
with prejudice whether these are
stereotypes about Islam and Christianity
or British identity and they one example
is that they use photographs and images
to show children that cultural and
religious stereotyping impacts
negatively on their communities and I’d
like to show an example from from one of
their workshops and in the next slide
you will see an image and it’s from it’s
not the actual photograph it’s a drawing
of a photograph
and there are some words added to the
photograph now some of you might find
that this drawing and the words
offensive upsetting challenging so a
please bear with me and I’ll explain so
in this drawing you can see a woman
she’s wearing a blue burka and she’s
pointing a good and the words say terror
attack level severe an attack is highly
likely for security reasons it’s now
time to ban the burqa now the first time
I saw this image I was in a school
watching the project with a group of
children and maybe like you I was
surprised I was shocked I didn’t know
what was looking at I guess though that
the image was saying something about
terrorism so would it change your
opinion if I told you that the drawing
is based on a real photograph and that
was taken some time ago the words they
were added later by a far-right group to
promote an anti-muslim message the the
woman in the figure in the drawing is
actually a real person and her name is
Lieutenant Colonel Malala Kaka and she’s
not a terrorist
she was the first female police officer
to graduate from Kandahar police station
in Afghanistan she was a fearless
spokesperson for female rights and she
was a mother the photographer
Lena Scelzi took the photograph of
Malala as a publicity image to promote
mallilie as a female police officer
because you don’t get that many female
police officers in Afghanistan it was a
positive image in 2008 the Taliban
assassinated mallilie she was shot and
murdered on her way to work and in front
of her son in 2014
far-right took up the image added the
words and posted on social media to
promote an anti-muslim message it’s a
very simple exercise but it shows that
bias and
prejudice affects how we see others an
ideology well an ideology distorts the
truth and that brings me to the next
company tapestry is a play by the
company the play house and it tells the
story of a couple of characters who are
put up in a riot and the riot is between
a far-right group called the young
Patriots and an Islamist group called
the circle of truth and because of the
riot the characters are kind of trapped
in a shop and they can’t leave so
they’re forced to speak to each other
and they find out this that the reasons
it took the young boy into the young
Patriots wanting a sense of identity
wanting to belong wanting to make sense
of his world wanting a future was
exactly the same as a young man who
would join the circle of truth there
were so many similarities between them
both reveal and the play has set up a
deliberate tension between far-right and
Islamist extremism because in theatre we
know that violence violence is not
produced in isolation violence manifests
in relation and in tension with other
causes now I’ve worked in theatre and
education for 30 years and I have seen
theatre changed lives
honestly it changes my life I’ve seen it
change lives but I’m not here to say
that theatre can offer a magic bullet
the problems of the world cannot be
solved by watching a play or taking part
in a drama workshop of course not but if
we want to talk to young people about
terrorism then we have to change the
conversation and we have to provide
space for young people to talk openly
and safely and without judgement and
theater well theatre can get us into the room thank you very much
Please follow and like us: