The aim of CreateWorks is to explore the use of performance as a means for engineers to engage non-academic audiences with their research and for engineers to explore the use of drama as a means to understand the human aspects of their research. We set out to give engineers the skills to personalise and empathetically communicate their research and allow audiences to see themselves in those stories.
The three main strands of our activities have been:
1. Writing for Performance workshops
These workshops guided our participant engineers through the process of writing a short play, which have now all been professionally recorded and will soon be released to the public. The aim of these workshops was to explore how story, drama and character can help us to convey the meaning and impact of research and creatively engage audiences who might not have any pre-existing awareness of engineering research. We hope that the resulting audio dramas will be thought-provoking and increase awareness of engineering research amongst the public and that our participant engineers will have developed their ability to communicate their research creatively to a broader range of audiences.
2. Skills workshops
In these three one-off workshops experienced theatre practitioners shared from their professional skill set with a focus on the voice, physicality, and self-critique. Participants were guided through breathing and voice techniques to improve their public speaking skills; posture and body language techniques to enhance their public presentation skills and project confidence and openness; and how to critically reflect on their own communication in order to stay on message and deliver their key ideas in accessible ways to different audiences. These workshops were active, physical, and reflective, and we hope they unlocked a new toolkit of skills in our participant engineers. If possible, we plan to hold more of these workshops in the future when in-person events are permitted.
3. Public Engagement opportunities
For the final stage of our project we are now planning events that will test the impact of our project on our participants’ public engagement skills by releasing the audio plays that we have created to the public and hosting live Q&A events with our participant writers, in which they will practice their communication and engagement skills when speaking publicly about their research and audio drama.
