I am an artist who is married to an academic. We often joke that whilst it seems like our jobs are worlds apart, my partner who researches addiction, and myself; co-founder of a devising political theatre company, are both fundamentally trying to do the same thing - we are trying to better understand and then share our thoughts or findings around an important subject with a wider audience, in the hope of inspiring change.
I co-founded The Paper Birds 22 years ago after leaving Bretton Hall, Leeds University. The Paper Birds are now an Arts Council National Portfolio based in Maldon, Essex. Our vision for social change is to empower people to think about what a better world might look like. We start conversations between hearts and minds because we believe that is the space where change can begin. We aspire to be the conversation starters, the thought-provokers, the catalyst for individuals and communities to begin to action their own change.
The Paper Birds’ first experience of working with an academic came in 2012 when we were approached by Dr Sam Friedman from Edinburgh University. Sam was excited by the company’s ability to take large, often sociopolitical subjects and make them accessible and started by inviting us to perform our 2011 show about binge drinking culture ‘Thirsty’ to his sociology students at Edinburgh University. Following this, and now working at London School of Economics, Sam approached us in 2015 with some of his research on social mobility and asked us if we might be interested in making a show in response to it. We went on to make and tour ‘Mobile’ an intimate one-woman show set in a caravan which explored the complexities of rapid social mobility for individuals as their communities are left behind.
You can watch a short documentary on the ‘Making of Mobile’ here.
Our experience of working with Sam was so positive that we decided in 2020 at the height of COVID-19 to take our work with academics to the next level via a project called ‘The School of Hope’. Through a series of practical workshops exploring empathy The School of Hope worked with 75 young people from 5 countries across 3 continents. The project partnered with Laura K Taylor (PhD), Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin, and Reader at Queen’s University, Belfast, as well as Katrina Brown, Emerita Professor of Social Science at University of Exeter and Dr John Lambie, Associate Professor of Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. We not only wanted to ensure the content and rationale behind the empathy workshops were sound, but we also wanted for the first time to measure impact. With a mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis, we were able to evidence that the pro-social behaviour and empathy levels of participants of The School of Hope had increased.
You can watch a short documentary about The School of Hope here.
Evidencing impact in the arts is a contentious subject, many feel that some things cannot and should not be evaluated by tick boxes and numbers; art and its impact being one of these. Whilst we wholeheartedly agree that art should not, and often cannot be ‘measured’, we were excited to have evidence of the workshops impact, especially at a time where we felt so disconnected, housebound and helpless; unable to make and tour shows and have impact in the way we were used to.
This work alongside academics continued after lockdown, most recently being supported by Professor Rosemary Klich, Director of Research at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, as we created our new interactive show ‘Feel Me’. This theatre show about empathy asks its audience via their mobile phones to anonymously share how they feel about the show as they watch it, the results are then projected and shared live on stage in real time. The show also asks audiences to opt in and stay in touch so that we can enquire about any real world impact the show might have had several weeks later.
This year we plan to begin research and development on a new show about mental health and the way we talk to ourselves, and setting the show in a human brain, we are already on the look out for experts and academics to collaborate with and whom, like us, feel the arts and academia can flourish when working together to speak to audiences.
As well as seeing the similarities, my partner and I also often laugh about the stark differences between our industries - the funding available and the ethical approval needed, both being examples. But our differences are what make us strong, academics can open our eyes, they can discover, uncover and provide proof to change policies, to inform decision makers, to improve the world. Art can move people, it can make sense of the world we live in, it inspires and challenges us all. So together we really have the potential to do incredible things, it's why academics and artists should continue to collaborate and why they really do make a great marriage.
If you are interested in the work of The Paper Birds, please find out more about the company:
Website: www.thepaperbirds.com
Instagram: ThePaperBirds
Facebook: The Paper Birds
Blue Sky: @thepaperbirds
Or contact: Jemma@thepaperbirds.com
Image credit: Mobile - Photo by The Other Richard