This page has information on the wide range of research projects that we are involved in. Please scroll down for more details of our completed projects to date and our ongoing research projects. Research projects are arranged with the most recent research appearing first.

Completed projects include 'Animated debate', 'Websites made by young people', 'Shared spaces; Informal learning and digital cultures', 'Making playful learning visible' and 'Connect 2000'.

Ongoing projects include 'Creative biographies' and 'Small business support' and there are also links to more research that WAC has been included in.

Our starting point
We believe in the power of the performing and creative arts. This is especially true in reaching out to children and young people who may not be able to fully take part in mainstream educational systems for any of a variety of different reasons - from those with learning difficulties to those who just do not enjoy school.

For all children and young people, we know that it is good to develop self-esteem as well as to have fun, to play act and to experiment in the arts. At WAC, we encourage all children and young people to try out and then develop their skills in the performing arts. This might be to complement their academic skills or sometimes to be the first step towards working with others in a positive way.

Our research work is mainly concerned with examining the role that the arts and 'informal education' has in engaging with children and young people. We also want to know if these qualities could be transferred across to the formal education system to keep children and young people motivated, engaged and working productively towards their life objectives. We hope to work towards reducing the numbers of exclusions and to help keep, particularly marginalised, children and young people on track to personal success and achievement.

Research development
In our work over the last thirty years, WAC has consistently tried to describe and define good practice. Having experimented with a number of ways of working in the community arts, or informal education, sector we are now involved in a range of research projects. As part of our work, we want to explore in detail how young people learn in the arts most effectively, and how our work might thus affect what happens in schools and colleges.

Our research programme aims to develop a model of 'informal education'. We hope to describe diverse models of informal 'pedagogy', types of teaching and learning, and also to consider how teaching and learning might be situated in the different social context of a community-based, training-orientated arts organisation.

We believe WAC, and organisations like it, make a significant contribution to the identification of effective teaching and learning approaches with young people. If our sector were able to engage in productive dialogue with formal education and to share models of good practice, we believe this would have important implications for the development of curriculum and pedagogy within schools and colleges.

To this end, WAC is engaged in a series of research projects exploring both young people's learning at WAC, and also how young people's experience of arts and media cultures outside schools might influence future development in education and training.

Completed projects to date
These are some of the projects that we have completed to date:

Animated debate
WAC was a partner in a pilot project entitled 'Animated debate - computer animation workshops'. This is an international project that sought to develop innovative ways of using Information Computer Technology in artistic activities. Led by colleagues in Poland, the project has additional partners in Romania and Sicily.

The target group for 'Animated debate' consisted of socially excluded young people from each of the partner nations and we ran computer animation workshops for children and young people between the ages of ten and twenty years old. Please click on Animated debate for more detailed information about the project, or go to the following web page: http://www.teatrgrodzki.netpol.pl/cd_guide/pages_eng/debate.html

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Websites made by young people
A study of web authoring by young people looks at the technical, institutional, aesthetic and generic determinants influencing the precise nature of 'new' web based productions.

The outcomes of this research were published as: 'Style, genre and technology: the strange case of youth culture online' by O'Hear, S. and Sefton-Green, J in Snyder, I. and Beavis, C. [eds] Doing Literacy Online Cresskill, NJ: New Hampton Press (2004)

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Shared spaces: Informal learning and digital cultures
As schools and families increasingly equip themselves with digital technology, the ways children play, learn and are taught are bound to change. In contrast with the formal space of schools, many children's experiences of the digital world take place in informal settings such as libraries, homes, or community centres.

This project looks at a range of learning situations involving digital technology and asks how educators can engage with children and successfully bring these experiences into the classroom.

Please click on 'Shared spaces ' for more information about this interesting project.

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Making playful learning visible
Making Playful Learning Visible (MPLV) took place during the first six months of 2004. The project was initiated and funded by The Next Generation Foundation (www.ngf.org.uk) and implemented and evaluated by WAC Performing Arts and Media College (www.wac.co.uk).

Two pilot projects were carried out during this period. This evaluation considers how MPLV was set up and run, how the participants interacted during the project and what they may have learnt. It also examines how MPLV might be developed further in later incarnations, the nature of the learning experienced during the project and how such principles might be further articulated. It concludes with a set of final recommendations for taking the idea further.

To find out more about the Making Playful Learning Visible project, please click on MPLV final report which gives an in-depth account of the full study.

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Connect 2000
This project was designed to enable us to develop a range of new media projects with socially disadvantaged young people. Research conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research concentrated on investigating four main aims:

1. to define and compare the 'informal' education sectors in which the programmes are being mounted;
2. to portray the distinctive qualities and processes of teaching and learning in media education projects within these informal contexts;
3. to identify the effects and outcomes of these programmes, especially the contribution they may make to the wider agenda of combating social exclusion; and
4. to examine the relationships between the pedagogic processes involved in teaching at out-of-school institutions and the effect such teaching has on our students.

The results of this research were published in the report: 'Making Connection: Media Education and Social Inclusion' by Lord, P., Paul Doherty, P. & Sefton-Green, J. Leicester: National Youth Agency (2002)

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Ongoing research projects :
Much of the work that WAC does is innovative and pioneering. Last Mile is one our current projects and is funded by EQUAL as a research project. Please click on the Last Mile link for more information about this special project for emerging arts professionals.

Creative biographies
This research will explore the nature and meaning of occupations in the creative and cultural industries for the people involved. It will produce between seven to ten 'creative biographies' of people who have passed through WAC at some stage of their career. The biographies will represent different stages of career success and also comparative maturity - in terms of their place within a career trajectory. The individuals included in the study will have worked across a range of creative industries (dance, theatre, etc.). Typically they will demonstrate fractured careers and 'portfolio' patterns of employment.

The biographical approach will allow for a study of specific life-moments and subjective conceptualisations of the barriers, pathways and opportunities which supported and hindered employment.

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Small business support
WAC's recent work in supporting the growth of small business and working with ethnic minority entrepreneurs within the creative and cultural industries has very much been conducted in an experimental fashion. It is not clear what strategies for support work most effectively and what will develop long term success. It is obvious that some 'failures' in business may be personally satisfying for some individuals, but others have found 'failure' challenging.

This research begins by summarising the literature and agencies available which support small business growth. It offers four detailed case studies of the businesses developed at WAC. These track key moments which influenced the direction of the business and analyse how the key individuals involved have used forms of social capital to develop their enterprises.

The results are analysed to provide key strategies for supporting businesses of this kind in this sphere.

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Links to more research:
In addition to the research that we undertake ourselves, WAC is also profiled in 'New Spaces for Learning: Developing the Ecology of Out-of-School Education' by Sefton-Green, J. Hawke Research Institute Working Paper series. Nos. 35 (2006).

For more information on this work, please click on the New Spaces link or go to the following web page : http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/publications/workingpaper.asp#35

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