Owens, Allan
- Contact Information
Biography
The focus of my practice and research is on learning through use of critically-creative pedagogy in the arts for understanding of self, organisation and society. My expert practice within this is in the use of Pretext Drama as an arts-based research method with a particular commitment to the concepts of equality and equity in education. This leads me to work in a wide range of professional contexts both nationally and internationally, within and beyond the Academy including: Education, Creative & Cultural Industries, Justice ...
Institutional profile
Professor Emeritus Drama Education, Distinguished Teaching Fellow, National Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University of Chester, UK. http://www.chester.ac.uk/departments/education/staff/allan-owens Co-Founder of RECAP, (Centre for Research in to Education, Creativity and the Arts through Practice https://www.facebook.com/creativityresearch/ My current practice, research and publications focus on applied drama and theatre, drama education, creative pedagogy, the intercultural dimension ...
Biography
The focus of my practice and research is on learning through use of critically-creative pedagogy in the arts for understanding of self, organisation and society. My expert practice within this is in the use of Pretext Drama as an arts-based research method with a particular commitment to the concepts of equality and equity in education. This leads me to work in a wide range of professional contexts both nationally and internationally, within and beyond the Academy including: Education, Creative & Cultural Industries, Justice and Policing, Health, Social and Youth Work, Community, Built & Sustainable Environment, Public Organisations, Private Business and Third Sector enterprises and organisations working on cross-sector issues such as equality. I lead local, national and international networks of higher education institutions and cultural organisations; have developed research initiatives; been scientific advisor to large scale and small research projects; board member on high profile national and local arts organisations, supporter of grass-root campaign groups; submitted, run and chaired academic tracks at international conferences; led complex multi-country strategic partnership projects; managed international teams of academics in long-term capacity building projects across multiple organisations and countries; run intensive short and extended programmes; secured doctoral scholarships with overseas partners; acted as scientific advisor and reviewer to international academic journals; am regularly invited to lead workshops and speak on international courses; staged pretext-based interactive performances with colleagues locally and around the world.
Institutional profile
Professor Emeritus Drama Education, Distinguished Teaching Fellow, National Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University of Chester, UK. http://www.chester.ac.uk/departments/education/staff/allan-owens Co-Founder of RECAP, (Centre for Research in to Education, Creativity and the Arts through Practice https://www.facebook.com/creativityresearch/ My current practice, research and publications focus on applied drama and theatre, drama education, creative pedagogy, the intercultural dimension of drama and in particular the use of research methodology that reaches beyond text. I teach the ‘Cultural Practice’ course on the Doctorate in Education programme and supervise Doctoral students.
- Fields of Specialization
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Education
Creativity
Arts
Drama
Research
- Degrees
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PhD
MA
BA (Hons)
- Externally hosted work:
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• Board Member Storyhouse (2015-ongoing) https://www.storyhouse.com/. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/07/chester-storyhouse-odeon-theatre-library-review Chester’s culture centre, theatres- library- public realm open-space new build £37 million. • Education Committee Member, Shakespeare North (2018-ongoing) The Playhouse, Prescot, £24 million new build commenced (2019), focusing on Shakespearean performance practice with a new International University College. http://www.shakespearenorth.org • Scientific Advisory Board Member, ARTSEQUAL research initiative. A multidisciplinary research project, coordinated by the University of Arts, team of 50 researchers •Duration: 6 years, 2015 – 2021 Funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland- Euros 6 million. http://www.artsequal.fi/. • External Examiner BA Drama University of Huddersfield. • External Examiner BA Applied Drama and Community Theatre, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, Liverpool John Moores University. • External Examiner MA Professional Practice: Theatre and Drama Facilitation, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, Liverpool John Moores University. • Advisory Board Member and Review, Applied Theatre Research: Intellect. • Advisory Board Member, The Journal for Drama in Education: National Association for the Teaching of Drama. • Advisory Board Member, The Journal of Drama and Theatre Education in Asia: Hong Kong Drama/ Theatre Education Forum.
- Position / Title
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Professor Emeritus
- General research area(s)
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Drama Education
Applied Theatre
Creative Pedagogies
Arts-Based Research
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Arts-Aided Recognition of Citizens’ Perceptions for Urban Open Space ManagementSuomalainen, Sari; Kahiluoto, Helena; Passila, Anne; Owens, Allan; Holtham, Clive; LUT University; University of Chester; University of London (MDPI, 2021-12-23)Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both ecosystems and humans, and the management of the urban spaces can benefit from knowledge of individuals’/citizens’ perceptions of such environments. However, such knowledge is scarce and contemporary inquiries are often limited to cognitive observations and focused on built environmental elements rather than encouraged to recognize and communicate comprehensive perceptions. This paper investigates whether arts-based methods can facilitate recognition and understanding perceptions of urban open spaces. Two arts-based methods were used to capture perceptions: drifting, which is a walking method, and theatrical images, which is a still image method and three reflective methods to recognize and communicate the perceptions. The results show related sensations and perceptions enabled by arts-based methods comparing them to a sticker map method. The main findings were perceptions, which included information about human−environment interaction, about relations to other people and about ‘sense of place’ in urban open spaces. The hitherto unidentified perceptions about urban open space were associations, metaphors and memories. The methods used offer initial practical implications for future use.
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Conflicting professional identities for artists in transprofessional contextsLehikoinen, Kai; Passila, Anne; Owens, Allan; University of the Arts; LUT University; University of Chester (Routledge, 2021-07-02)This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities within the challenges of working in unfamiliar transprofessional contexts. It also investigates the expanding professionalism of artists in the transprofessional realm of artistic interventions in organisations. Ariane Berthoin Antal argues that artists’ professional identities and also responsibilities are geared towards some fundamental values in the arts, and that it is vital for artists to maintain such values as they collaborate with other professions. To exemplify expanded work in transprofessional contexts, our attention now turns to the experiences of four artists—a theatre director, a performance artist, a dancer, and a dramaturg—who took part in the pilot programme at Uniarts. It is imperative in higher arts education to discuss critically the relationship between professionalism in more traditional artistic practice and the expanding professionalism of hybrid artists in new transprofessional domains.
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Using Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy to Foster Critically Reflective Learning about Management and LeadershipOwens, Allan; Passila, Anne; Malin, Virpi; University of Chester, Lapeenranta University of Technology, Jyvaskyla University. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019-04-19)This chapter focuses on an Arts-Based Intervention (ABI) into an Introductory course of Management and Leadership offered to students considering key concepts and frames of thinking in the field for the first time. First, we introduce Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy and conceptually frame our ABI in relation to the mode of learning that it allows for together with the drive for equality that it is concerned with. We then introduce the context of the ABI, describe the course and its background and the course facilitators together with information about the participants. Emphasis is placed on the way the course was framed to bring a sense of present-day management reality through our use of art-based methods including an ongoing collaboration with an experienced R&D manager who is part of the course team. Next an explanation of the content of three of the Art-based Methods used in the course as part of the whole ABI. This is followed by a description of the process of learning providing a sense of what the experience of learning would be like for a participant. The impact and experiences of learning during the intervention are then discussed from the students’ and the tutors’ perspectives. The final two sections focus on impact and lessons learned.
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Exploring the material mediation of dialogic space – A qualitative analysis of professional learning in Initial teacher education based on reflective sketchbooksMoate, Josephine; Hulse, Bethan; Jahnke, Holger; Owens, Allan; Jyvaskyla University; University of Chester; Europa University, Flensburg (Elsevier, 2018-12-05)This study addresses the crucial relationship between theory and practice as a key feature of professional learning in initial teacher education. The context for the study is an EU-funded intensive programme drawing on different dimensions of insideness and outsideness and arts-based pedagogies in response to the diversity of education today. The data for the study comes from self-selected pages from preservice teacher participants’ reflective sketchbooks. As a methodological approach that unifies the sensuous and cognitive this study suggests that reflective sketchbooks document the dialogic encounters of students whilst also providing a material space that can itself become a form of dialogic space for critical reflection. The main findings of the study outline critical ways in which preservice teachers transform theoretical inputs into individual expressions as well as conceptualise theory in relation to lived experience.
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Exploring the material mediation of dialogic space—A qualitative analysis of professional learning in initial teacher education based on reflective sketchbooksMoate, Josephine; Hulse, Bethan; Hanke, Holger; Owens, Allan; University of Jyvaskyla; University of Chester; Europa-Universität Flensbur (Elsevier, 2018-12-05)This study addresses the crucial relationship between theory and practice as a key feature of professional learning in initial teacher education. The context for the study is an EU-funded intensive programme drawing on different dimensions of insideness and outsideness and arts-based pedagogies in response to the diversity of education today. The data for the study comes from self-selected pages from preservice teacher participants’ reflective sketchbooks. As a methodological approach that unifies the sensuous and cognitive this study suggests that reflective sketchbooks document the dialogic encounters of students whilst also providing a material space that can itself become a form of dialogic space for critical reflection. The main findings of the study outline critical ways in which preservice teachers transform theoretical inputs into individual expressions as well as conceptualise theory in relation to lived experience
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Through the lens of Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy- collective imagining of democratic forms of being.Passila, Anne; Owens, Allan; LUT University (Lahti- Lappeenranta) (Xamk, 2018-11-08)This chapter focuses on Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy as a conceptual frame of arts based method applied to a discussion and collective imagining of democratic forms of being with young people, artists, art pedagogues and researchers. The background of KP is a problem identified by one of the founding theorist of critical pedagogy Henry A. Giroux (2014a), which is that democracy has been sullied as a concept – as a ´service` - and no longer offers the promise of emancipation (Giroux, 2014b). The discussion, therefore, is about understandings of democracy: what it might look like and how it would feel to be in it according to young people themselves.
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Change and the Meaning of ArtOwens, Allan; Petäjäjärvi, Krista; University of Chester, UK; Centre for the Promotion of Artists /Taiteen edistämiskeskus, Finland (Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Centre for the Promotion of Artists), 2018-10-19)In Williams’ (1961) theory of the long revolutions – democratic, industrial and cultural – in which our societies have been embedded for generations, he argues that the very large scale of the changes and the many generations affected over time make it difficult to have any adequate perspective on the scale, depth and complexity of the changes that we nonetheless experience. (Adams and Owens, 2016). These long term social changes and conflicts are inevitably manifest in short term, contingent and local ways: ways of thinking and practising are continually changing and in so doing mirror or amplify the deeper currents of social change. Applied drama and theatre practice with all its specificities and cultural nuances, its implication of agency and collaboration, is a medium through which these deeper currents can be touched. The forms that such interactions and collaborations take can provide a lens on what change through art might mean.
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Beyond Text: The co-creation of dramatised character and iStoryPassila, Anne; Owens, Allan; Kuusipalo-Maatta, Paula; Oikarinen, Tuija; Benmergui, Raquel; University of Lapeenranta; University of Chester; University of Tampere (Emerald, 2017-12-04)In exploring the impact of reflective and work applied approaches we are curious how vivid new insights and collective ‘Eureka’ momentums occur. These momentums can be forces for work communities to gain competitive advantages. However, we know little of how learning is actively involved in the processing of creating new insights and how such a turning to learning –mode (Pässilä and Owens, 2016) can be facilitated. In the light of cultural studies and art education, we explore how the method of dramatising characters in a specific innovation culture can be facilitated. In this viewpoint we are suggesting one approach for this type of turning to learning which we call Beyond Text, outlining its theoretical underpinnings, its co-creative development & its application In this Beyond Text context we are introducing the method of dramatising characters (DC) and the method of iStory both of which are our own design based on the theory of the four existing categories of research-based theatre (RBT). The findings of this viewpoint article are that both iStory as well as DC methods are useful and practical learning facilitation processes and platforms that can be adopted for use in organizations for promoting reflexivity. Especially they can act as a bridge between various forms of knowing and consummate the other knowledge types (experiential, practical and propositional) in a way that advances practice-based innovation. The originality and value of iStory and DC is that they can be utilized as dialogical evaluation methods when traditional evaluation strategies and pre-determined indicators are unusable.
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Troubling Mistakes: Playing with Our AssumptionsOwens, Allan; Korhonen, P.; Passila, Anne; Theatre Academy of Finland-University of Arts Helsinki, Lapeenranta University (Draamatayo, 2017-02-14)The Art of making Mistakes asks if mistakes exist in the first place. All the 17 international writers are professionals in the fields of drama and improvisation : teachers, researchers and artists, who have solid experience in the arts and who all have something to say about mistakes and how they view mistakes and the beauty that lies within them. This book is divided into two parts . In the first part, the writers reflect upon the philosophy of failure. In the second part, the writers offer workshops in which it is possible to consider one’s own relationship with mistakes, for instance through improv and drama exercises.
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Process Drama as a tool for teaching modern languages: supporting the development of creativity and innovation in early professional practiceHulse, Bethan; Owens, Allan; University of Chester (Taylor & Francis, 2017-02-10)This paper reflects on issues arising from a research-informed learning and teaching project intended to enable student teachers of Modern Languages (MLs) to experiment with the use of unscripted ‘process drama’ in their classroom practice. The idea that process drama could become part of the language teacher’s repertoire has been in circulation for some time (Kao and O’Neill, 1998; Bräuer, 2002; Fleming, 2006; Stinson and Freebody, 2006; Giebert, 2014) yet there is little evidence to suggest that its use has become widespread in schools in England. The aim of the project was to enable student teachers to acquire drama teaching techniques which they could incorporate into their own practice in order to enrich the learning experiences their students through creative and imaginative use of the foreign language in the classroom. The research was undertaken over a period of three years by two teacher educators on a secondary initial teacher education programme in a university in England. The paper concludes that it is both possible and desirable for student teachers to encounter alternative approaches which challenge the norm and that with support they may develop innovative practices which can survive the ‘the ‘crucible of classroom experience’ (Stronach et al. 2002, p.124).