Applied Theatre: Resettlement

Drama, Refugees and Resilience

Michael Balfour, Penny Bundy, Bruce Burton, Julie Dunn, Nina Woodrow, Sheila Preston, Michael Balfour

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781472533791
• eBook ISBN: 9781472522399
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

The book offers a compelling combination of analyis and detailed description of aesthetic projects with young refugee arrivals in Australia. In it the authors present a framework that contextualises the intersections of refugee studies, resilience and trauma, and theatre and arts-based practice, setting out a context for understanding and valuing the complexity of drama in this growing area of applied theatre. Applied Theatre: Resettlement includes rich analysis of three aesthetic case studies in Primary, Secondary and Further Education contexts with young refugees. The case studies provide a unique insight into the different age specific needs of newly arrived young people. The authors detail how each group and educational context shaped diverse drama and aesthetic responses: the Primary school case study uses process drama as a method to enhance language acquisition and develop intercultural literacy; the Secondary school project focuses on Forum Theatre and peer teaching with young people as a means of enhancing language confidence and creating opportunities for cultural competency in the school community, and the further education case study explores work with unaccompanied minors and employs integrated multi art forms (poetry, art, drama, digital arts, clay sculptures and voice work) to increase confidence in language acquisition and explore different forms of expression and communication about the transition process. Through its careful framing of practice to speak to concerns of power, process, representation and ethics, the authors ensure the studies have an international relevance beyond their immediate context. Drama, Refugees and Resilience contributes to new professional knowledge building in the fields of applied theatre and refugee studies about the efficacy of drama practice in enhancing language acquisition, cultural settlement and pedagogy with newly arrived refugee young people.

1

Introduction

The main need for individuals who are new arrivals is to feel safe – safety is crucial particularly in the early stages and then having information about what they are going to find in the new space . . . that and supporting them and ensuring that they are not undermined as human beings . . . with people treating them as if they don’t know anything . . . but they know things differently. There is an expectation here that because they come from a third world country, that they don’t know.

Resilience can be supported by valuing each person, not because he is a refugee, but because he is a person. This is crucial. Here you never take off that label of being a refugee, that you came as a refugee. You know that I have been here 23 years and I’m still a foreigner and you have to prove and prove and prove that you are able to have your own thinking and your own way of surviving. . . . Of course you have opportunities too, but that label of being a refugee is never taken away.

Mercedes Sepulveda, a refugee support worker

If I was the prime minister, I would ask people what their needs are . . . and build from there. If you set up a system without even asking people what their needs are, then you will never succeed. If I was the prime minister, I would change everything . . . I would allow the people to determine their own needs and work through them. I would find out what people can do, not what they can’t. But as soon as you arrive, you have someone else determining your needs and the activities you have to do, the language programs you will do. . . . Language classes don’t recognize how people learn. I was not happy to be there, I was there because the government told me I had to be.

Biruk: A refugee support worker from the Sudan

The two voices offered above remind us, somewhat painfully, that the settlement journey for an individual with a refugee background can be long and difficult. Confronted by systems that dehumanize and societies that are not always welcoming, the process of establishing a new life is fraught with challenges. Navigating these challenges is potentially more difficult for individuals who have experienced trauma in their homelands, or indeed during their journeys towards a new life. For these people, the obstacles they face in the settlement process can exacerbate their existing anxieties and fears. Disconnected from family networks, the familiarity of cultural practices and established patterns of daily life, individuals like Mercedes and Biruk, can easily feel like their identity has been stripped away from them and that bureaucratic processes are denying their individuality. In such situations, irrespective of their personal resilience, it is the social milieu they enter that can determine how positively they feel about and respond within their personal journey of settlement.

The research described in this book was designed to engage with children and young people undertaking these journeys, specifically those who have relocated to Logan – a rapidly growing Australian regional city bordering Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Generated in partnership with MultiLink Community Services, a local refugee support agency, and funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, the research extended across a 3-year period (2011–13). Three sub-projects involving participants across a range of age groups and contexts were created. Adopting a qualitative approach that drew upon action research and reflective practice methods, each case study was built upon pilot work developed in these same contexts.

In planning the overarching project, our initial vision was to use drama-based approaches to support settlement, specifically the resilience of individuals. However, as the various projects unfolded, and our understanding of the world of the newly arrived refugee expanded, we quickly became aware not only of the challenges we would face, but indeed of how limited our understanding of refugees, settlement and resilience were.

In many ways then, this book is as much about our team and our journey towards understanding as it is about the young people we worked with. For example, it examines how our understanding of resilience shifted from us seeing it as a personal trait, a quality or set of abilities that can be developed in individuals over time, to a more holistic understanding of resilience as a process, that is context bound, complex and for some, fragile. An individual or indeed a community’s resilience is to a great extent determined by the specific social context within which they are operating at any given moment.

Similarly, our understanding of the challenges of settlement and our capacity to make a positive contribution also shifted. Two earlier projects had given us some insights into these challenges, while a number of meetings with MultiLink team members soon revealed others. These challenges ranged from successfully navigating driver’s licence testing procedures through to more complex and significant processes such as dealing with child custody and child protection agencies. Unfortunately, in spite of persistent and dedicated attempts by our team to work directly with the government agencies responsible for these processes, in effect to support resettlement by working from our own side of the cultural fence, it soon became clear that there was significant resistance within some government agencies to our involvement, especially through the application of dramatic approaches. Like the newly arrived individuals and families we were hoping to support, it seemed that we were speaking a different language, that our ‘knowing’ was different and that these differences excluded us.

Fortunately, we found a more welcoming response from local educational institutions, especially those with an existing and highly positive relationship with MultiLink. The partnerships that eventually developed were with a local primary school, a large secondary school and a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) College. With a different focus, approach and set of team members working in each of these contexts, the three projects developed their own settlement goals and outcomes. What they shared, however, was an emphasis on the development of English language skills. This emphasis was not predetermined, but rather emerged as we engaged with the various institutions. All shared the belief that language development is a critical part of the settlement process and there was general acceptance across these institutions of the positive role that participatory forms of drama might play in this area.

We began slowly however, searching for the most appropriate forms of drama and the most effective ways of engaging with each group of newly arrived young people. For example, in the primary school case study, our first instinct was to draw on our skills as facilitators of process drama for we were aware of and convinced by the growing body of literature that has recently been reported in the area of process drama for additional language learning.¹ However, we were somewhat hesitant about how well this particular dramatic form might work with beginner language users with no shared language and whose literacy development in their first language was minimal or non-existent. We could find no evidence of anyone having tried process drama in such contexts before and therefore wondered if an alternative approach might be needed. For this reason, the primary school pilot study was a critical component of our approach.

We also began slowly in the secondary and TAFE projects, creating different cycles of action and data collection, being responsive to the needs and confidence of the young people we worked with. This slow approach enabled us to tread carefully, trying out ideas, listening and observing, and enacting new cycles and applying new approaches as our participants showed they were ready for them.

Our data-collection processes were also diverse and built up over time, with each project gently including the collection of photographs, artworks, observations, artefacts, video recordings of sessions and finally, interviews. This diversity of sources was aimed at creating rich and ‘thick’ textures to sift through and offered the possibility of assessing multiple layers of data.

Clearly then, the initial stages of our work involved identification of appropriate sites, consideration of the particular needs of the individuals within those sites and selection of drama and other arts-based approaches that might be most suitable in these contexts and for these purposes. Of course, we also needed to consider how we would deal with the personal stories of our participants, and in relation to this aspect of the work we recognized that we had three options – engaging with these stories directly, avoiding them entirely in favour of symbolic or fictional material, or finally, focusing only on personal stories that related to post-arrival experiences.

In considering these options, we were keenly aware of the fact that within the context of arts-based work, especially theatre, personal testimony is often seen as a key means of empowering newly arrived individuals through the sharing of subaltern experience with a wider audience. However, as Jeffers (2008) warns, these stories can also be interpreted as problematic representations of victimhood. Preoccupied with personal narratives and particularly drawing on the traumatic past, these theatrical representations can be conditioned by the judicial context within which stories are constructed. Indeed, the very category of refugee performance can create an essentialist frame from which the extrication of practice is almost impossible. The effort to construct a discourse about refugee performance is therefore enmeshed in an unwavering paradox. Put simply, how may practice deal with refugee stories when the stories themselves (bureaucratic performance, personal stories as victimhood, suffering as spectacle) make an encounter with alterity more elusive?

We were also mindful of the age of the children and young people we would be working with and our limited expertise in supporting trauma victims, and therefore determined that the most appropriate approach would be to avoid, where possible, the use of pre-arrival stories. Instead, we decided that a more effective approach would be to make use of stories and materials that would offer an appropriate level of distancing and emotional protection through symbol and metaphor. However, in line with our exploration of settlement processes, we agreed that it would be appropriate for some groups and individuals to share personal narratives relating to experiences post arrival.

The social ecology of the local context – Logan City

As part of the consultative process for this project and its three case studies, it was important for us to understand the social ecology of the local area we worked within, including how, where and why individuals with a refugee background sought help and support. The notion of community and social ecology draws from the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia (often translated as flourishing), the process of understanding aspects of life when considered as a whole. Importantly then, members of the research team had worked in the Logan area since 2007 and had developed a number of important local partners and interested multi-disciplinary collaborators. It is important to underline that both in terms of logistics and in relation to the quality of the dialogue between the practice and research, long-term partnerships are critical in navigating the complexities of issues at play within any given community. The most important of these relationships was of course with MultiLink Community Services, an organization begun in 1989 primarily to provide support and English classes to newly arrived refugees and migrants. The organization has grown now to offer services across the lifespan and has become a community-based organization that works with other grass roots organizations in the area and within a tight budget to address the local political and social issues faced by diverse individuals and their communities that call Logan home.

First settled by Europeans in the early 1800s, Logan City is now a rapidly growing regional city (Logan City Council). It first came to the attention of the governor of New South Wales when Captain Patrick Logan wrote a letter to say he had discovered a river south of Brisbane and expressed the notion that it was a place worthy of the attention of settlers. Since then, the Logan region has become an area that settlers and migrants from all over the world have flocked to. Over the years, world events have changed the demographics of the people arriving in the area and Logan is now a city which can claim to be home to over 215 different ethnic, religious and cultural groups, with all evidence pointing to this increasing. Logan boasts 26 per cent of its population being born overseas (Logan City Council).

One of the unique features of Logan as an area, however, is that despite its ethnic diversity of Samoan, Aboriginal, new migrants and humanitarian entrants, it has resisted ethnic enclaves. There are no specific areas, streets or suburbs defined or designated for or by specific ethnic or cultural groups. As such, its neighbourhoods are often a rich mix of ethnicities from many different countries.

Most refugees and asylum seekers who eventually settle in Logan City come from refugee camps or marginalized areas in urban settings, where the most basic resources and services were scarce or inappropriate to good health. Many of these individuals and families have experienced difficult events, such as prolonged periods of deprivation, loss of identity and culture, human-rights abuses and the loss of family members. Hence a significant proportion of the newly arrived in Logan are likely to have multiple and complex health problems on their arrival. Shona Doyle, a programme manager with MultiLink, observes:

Upon resettlement, refugees or humanitarian entrants carry the burden of their past, which can include war, persecution or family loss. When this is coupled with the resettlement process, often in low socio-economic areas, where all is unfamiliar, living on a budget that initially seems to be a lot of money and having to acquire another language, the resettlement process can be overwhelming for someone who has already had to endure so much change in their lives. We can see that once the physical and safety requirements of the individual are relatively satisfied and achieved through what is often described as the honeymoon period, people face problems ranging from culture shock and PTSD, to food insecurities and health and well-being issues including the management of chronic disease. In addition, most struggle to have their needs of belonging and building of esteem met.

Informing projects in Logan City

In October 2007, members of the research team were invited by MultiLink to develop a theatre project with newly arrived humanitarian entrants from Burundi and Ethiopia living in Logan City. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) funded the project that aimed to use the arts to disseminate experiences about Australia’s culture. Its steering group, made up of representatives from Burundi and Ethiopia, signalled that there were significant settlement problems within their community groups. With each group of new arrivals similar difficulties emerged, ranging from pragmatic domestic issues (learning to cook with a gas cooker, understanding how to use an ATM, etc.) to the more complex negotiation of understanding new cultural paradigms and values. The community representatives suggested that beyond the initial ‘honeymoon’ period of arrival, individuals and groups encountered considerable stress and anxiety in dealing with the acculturation process. Askland (2005), drawing on Giddens’ (1991) work, supports this view and found that many newly arrived young people from Timor living in Australia suffered from a loss of ontological security, a loss that undermines their sense of control, trust and power. Within school and community settings, this lack of security and identity led to adjustment issues including delinquent behaviour, attention problems, aggression or withdrawal (Allwood et al. 2002).

In response to the concerns outlined by MultiLink, it was determined that a Forum Theatre approach would be adopted that would use community stories of settlement to share with newly arrived groups. Forum theatre is a participatory drama form originally developed by Augusto Boal (1979) that was initially used to support individuals to overcome oppression. Here, actors create scenes based on stories shared by a number of individuals. In this way, the stories become fictionalized, allowing them to be safely used to promote discussion of the issues represented within them.

The firs...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on the Authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright