Home > News > March 2004 > 02-Mar-2004

Drama helps raise awareness of diversity

Learning consultancy Steps is running drama-based training sessions on diversity awareness for over 900 senior and middle managers at the University of Reading. Over a six-month period, Steps will deliver 24 one-hour sessions to bring to life issues of race, disability and gender discrimination for a group of staff which includes the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice-Chancellors, Deans of Faculty and Heads of School.

"In the past, we’ve provided equal opportunities training for new staff arriving at the University and people who sit on interview panels," said Justin Hutchence, Project Officer at the University. "We wanted to broaden that out, to existing staff and all senior and middle managers, to further raise awareness of the importance of diversity. However, we felt that training on equal opportunities issues could be seen as extremely dull. To overcome this, we decided to develop a short, focussed session, using a drama-based approach, that would be exciting, interactive and fun."

Following a tendering process, the University commissioned Steps to develop a one-hour training session featuring a range of scenarios on race, disability and gender discrimination. Around 50 staff attend each of the sessions. At the end, staff are informed of where they can obtain further information and advice on diversity issues.

"The scenarios are deliveredusing a technique called forum theatre," said Justin Hutchence. "The Steps actors role play different situations involving discrimination. Whenever a sticking point arises, one of the actors will freeze-frame the action and ask the audience for feedback on how they should alter their behaviour in order to resolve the situation. When an audience member provides a suggestion, the actor immediately puts it into effect and the audience sees the result. This is a very effective approach and it enables you to cover a whole series of sensitive issues in a relatively short space of time."

He adds that feedback from the sessions has been overwhelmingly positive. "One of the key benefits is that people feel safe to say what they really think and that level of honesty is positive and very refreshing," he said. "It is such an enjoyable form of training and the role plays really engage the audience and provoke a dialogue. When the Equality Advisory Service undertook an equal opportunities audit, they described the programme as highly effective and well-judged."

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