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“Theatre is nothing if not an art form enacted within possibility: co-designing applied theatre research in Paediatrics” – Prof Persephone Sextou, webinar | Thurs 10 Aug, 7-8pm.
QUT Design Lab and the Arts Health Network Queensland are delighted to host this free online presentation from Prof Persephone Sextou – a leading expert in interdisciplinary applied theatre for health and wellbeing.
Her co-design and co-production research model is informed by consultation with children in schools and hospitals and their families, and she uses mixed methodologies and tools to investigate the impact of arts-based research on the mental and social health and well-being of children and young people in education, health and palliative care.
In this talk, Persephone will share her share insights about the role of performing arts in child healthcare from her recent book Applied Theatre in Paediatrics. Children Stories & Synergies of Emotions (Routledge, 2023). She will share her research model; principles on the aesthetics and ethics of engaging vulnerable children in bedside theatre during their hospital stay, the defining features of bedside audience-actor synergies in her practice, the emotional protection of the creative participants within the fictional context, how the pandemic challenged her projects and changed her thinking about technology as a research medium, the brevity of incorporating digital tools in my research. Finally, she will present a few snapshots from hospitalised children’s stories as discussed in her book and dramatized by theatre students in Australia.
Find out more about her work here: https://www.persephonesextou.co.uk/Prof Persephone Sextou (Ph.D.) in Applied Theatre for Health & Wellbeing Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. School of the Arts and Media, Sydney NSW 2052 Australia.
Mentor at the University of Birmingham, U.K.
Website: https://www.persephonesextou.co.uk/
Email: p.sextou@unsw.edu.au and psextou@gmail.com
New book (2023): Applied Theatre in Paediatrics. Children, Stories and Synergies of Emotions (Routledge)
ABOUT THE BOOK
Stories, Children and Synergies of Emotions
This book explores applied theatre practice for children in environments of illness and cure and how it can powerfully normalise children’s hospitalisation experience. It is an essential tool for making meaning of children’s illness, putting it into a fictional context, and developing better control of their clinical experiences. It can be central to raising the standards of care and quality of life during illness.
Taken from the author’s research and participatory bedside theatre practice in hospitals before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, this book demonstrates new learning about aesthetics, ethics, emotions, stories, puppetry, digital arts and research methodologies about children’s health and wellbeing. It provides a selection of ten unique stories told by children inspired by applied theatre practice in paediatrics, cardiac, oncology, neurosurgery, burns units and complex and intensive care wards. Stories aid in understanding the language of children’s pain for a better assessment and management of pain by healthcare professionals through the arts. It analyses synergistic theatre performance in “stitched lands” between challenging realities and safe fictionalities. This book enables artists to develop new ways of thinking and contributes to further improvements in the provision of education and reflective learning in the field.
Previous book (2016): Theatre for children in hospital:
https://www.intellectbooks.com/theatre-for-children-in-hospital
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