Susan Davis

CQUniversity, Australia

s.davis@cqu.edu.au

Keynote presentation for Drama Australia National Symposium

Canberra 29 Sept 2017

Dramatic thinkingOwning our process!

Images taken in and outside of the Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra

DESIGN THINKING

Along with STEM, Design Thinking seems to be everywhere at present.

Promoted as a generic creative and problem-solving process, sometimes as the means to teach STEM.

Design thinking – over 17,500,000 results they have some good graphics!

IDEO Design thinking for educators

Design thinking – makes some pretty big claims!

Design thinking models….

There are a range of models, promoted by some major companies and organisations

• Stanford d.school

• IDEO

• Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian

THINK ABOUT KEY ASPECTS OF THE WAY YOU THINK AND WORK WITH A NEW PROJECT… WHAT DO THESE MODELS CAPTURE/NOT CAPTURE?

Participants suggested: creating, people, embodiment

Design Minds – State Library of Queenslandhttp://designonline.org.au/toolkit-getting-started-with-design-thinking/

WHILE SOME MODELS INCLUDE EMPATHY, DOES THAT DO JUSTICE TO THE HUMAN PARTICIPANTS, ROLES, PROCESSES OF OUR ART FORM, WHERE WE MAKE WITH AND FOR (NOT FOR ‘USERS’)?

Also note… how we are convieving of thinking here. The mind and thinking extends beyond what is held in one person’s ‘brain’, and in creative processes such as those in drama, bodies and minds jointly interact to construct and create.

Kathryn Dolan – drama with Early Childhood Children

However, design thinking models arose from graphic design and visual arts traditions, so does that matter?

And as Somerson, Hermano & Maeda (2013) identify these are ‘object-based’ learning and thinking traditions.

Design thinking models were created to describe processes concerned with making a ‘thing’ that sits outside of the makers.

Dramatic thinking – around 20,000 results, no coherent framework

What’s with the images of contemplative men?

Davis 2017 (created using Easel.ly)

LET’S EXPLORE… BEING IN CANBERRA, WORKING AS A ‘DRAMATIST’

The house on the hill, the centre of power

The white house below… old parliament house

The ‘not- white’ people across the road, with whom no treaty has ever

been signed

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy… A premise… looking for the black

history in the white house!

Museum of Australian Democracy display

Museum of Australian Democracy display

Image in the MOAD DisplayPhoto courtesy of the National Archives

The people and the stories behind the 1967 referendum –

Faith Bandler, Pearl Gibbs

And with Jessie Street… a woman of colour who was not Aboriginal, an Aboriginal woman, and a pioneering (white) feminist.

Wonderful women – great characters and stories to work with … where could you take that through dramatic thinking

Scriptwriting, playbuilding, process drama, performance???

http://jute.com.au/2015/whats-on/proppa-solid/

A possible text to use with a class as a pre-text and premise… it’s 2044 and Australia has it’s first Aboriginal President …. What happened in the 100 years leading up to that time?

Dramatic thinking

Verbs to activate the process

• Ideate

• Relate

• Create

• Shape and translate

• Communicate

Davis 2017 (created using Easel.ly)

Why a human focussed thinking process might be relevant beyond the world of drama? We live in a world not only populated by things, but people! Knowing how to work with them, problem-solve and create with them still matters… probably matters more than ever!