“Feedback from these sessions has been excellent. All staff have found the opportunities to practice real-life scenarios with actors immensely beneficial.”
Graham Bourton, Head of Oxford City Homes
Who are the courses aimed at?
Anyone who works in a customer or client-facing role:
- Teachers, social workers, youth workers
- Customer service providers
- Housing associations
- Enforcement officials (police, environment services, parking wardens, probation workers, prison wardens)
Groups can range in number from eight to eighty
What is forum theatre?
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 an 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.
Course overview
- Consultation with managers and staff to tailor-make the course and create role-specific scenarios for forum theatre
- Write course notes integrating the organisation’s policies around personal safety
- Run one-day courses with an actor (three actors if the group is large)
- Consultation with managers and staff to embed learning and, if necessary, to review policies.
Course aims
- Collecting ideas and strategies from the group for calming down situations of conflict
- Practising these strategies in role-specific scenarios with the use of forum theatre
- Refreshing the policies and strategies that have been put in place by the organisation to keep employees safe, and exploring if any of these systems should be improved
Organisations
The following organisations have employed my services in this area:
- Oxford City Homes, 150 delegates (click here for reference)
- Oxford University (all customer care providers)
- EasyJet (all cabin crew and ground staff)
- Oxford City Council (environmental department, leisure staff, park wardens)
- Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (parking, customer services,
youth services, social services, environmental department)
Feedback
“Working with actors presenting real life work situations made the course come to life
for me. I thoroughly enjoyed myself AND learnt something, which is rare!!”
“Fun from beginning to end. I was dreading working with actors – but soon forgot to be worried and threw myself in to it all.”
“Milly and the actors helped put everyone at their ease with their good humour – a really interesting day.”
“A good time to reflect. I’ve been doing the job for a very long time now, and didn’t think I needed a course like this. I learnt far more than I thought possible, especially around personal safety.”
