southwark theatres' education partnership

At a time when STEP is evaluating its most recent programme of work and looking to its future, STEP Creative Director, Beccy Allen, considers the value of STEP, the importance of collaboration and the way forward in these Hard Times.

As we approached the eighth STEP Festival last autumn we thought about where STEP had come from and where it was headed. In an article back in June last year, I wrote about how proud we were at STEP that the 2011 Festival would be longer and more ambitious than ever before. As the build-up to the Festival took place and I began thinking about my speech for the Opening Event it became impossible not to think about STEP as being on a trajectory; a path forwards and upwards. But also that simultaneously STEP was coming back to its core objective and ideal: that strength is found in partnership and collaboration. This is the objective that has always steered STEP in its aim to establish the process by which performing arts practice with young people is coordinated in Southwark.

The ethos behind STEP has, for me, always been about the process of partnership and relationship-building that we advocate. That we believe there is a best way to make that happen. And having just finished evaluating the 2011 Festival with partners it is clear that what stands out for those we work with is that our judgement is trusted, that partners see the integrity in how we go about building partnerships, brokering new relationships between education and performing arts partners.

In many discussions about what STEP is when I meet people for the first time I often say, we do exactly what it says on the tin: we are all about Southwark (understanding its uniqueness and exploring its possibilities); we are all about Theatres (the buildings staging theatre, the practitioners making theatre and the companies writing theatre); we are all about Education (the institutions and processes through which young people learn, develop and achieve); we are all about Partnership (between schools and theatres, theatres and theatres, schools and schools, teachers and practitioners, young people and performing arts practice). And it is those four words which will drive us forward in the Hard Times we all face in the wake of funding cuts and funding gaps.

But there’s also an apostrophe in STEP too and as anyone who knows me well, I’m a stickler for grammar.

That apostrophe is important. It reflects that the partnership and network that STEP has created belongs to the partners that we work with. STEP is, and always has been, the sum of its parts. A one-person organisation could never achieve the depth of work that it has in the borough without the vision and drive of theatres and theatre companies who value collaboration and see the added value that STEP brings to theatre and drama practice with young people in the borough and to their individual organisations.

But how do you measure the importance of an organisation that “adds value”? How do we determine what would and wouldn’t happen without STEP and other networking/brokering/partnering organisations of its ilk? One partner recently mused about the importance of 2nd Tier organisations such as STEP describing them as the “Cinderellas of the arts world”, toiling behind the scenes to support and promote other people’s work. But that person’s same musings questioned whether 2nd Tier organisations ever get the recognition they deserve and what the implications for collaborative working would be if they did not exist and fell as a result of the most recent cuts in funding.

Collaboration has long been a big buzz word within the arts and certainly isn’t going to disappear anytime soon (I have, for instance, recently been part of Shift conversations at the Barbican and Guildhall School, a Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded action research initiative which is, among other things, looking at what collaboration really means). And collaboration is happening around us all the time, from the smallest to the largest of scales. And it happens with and without support from 2nd Tier organisations. But, would it happen in the same way and with the same depth without a support structure that is looking at the bigger picture, whether that bigger picture is art-form, age-range, or geographically specific?

As part of my speech at the Opening Event of the most recent STEP Festival and the other contributions that were made that evening, we looked at the new (a new company working in residence at long-standing partner theatre), the collaborative (bringing parents together to partake in the work that their children are doing at school), the tried and the tested (a long-running Festival project that works well, so why constantly seek the new?), the surviving theatre partner (overcoming adversity), the school (the proactive, go-getting former actor who is now a teacher), the artist (who is working in partnership with a theatre company and a school and creating their work in response), and the Mayor (the Local Authority input, recognition and helping hand). That collection of performances and speeches spoke volumes about what STEP is and what the value of 2nd Tier organisations remains to be. The eclectic mix of all of those elements, the working behind the scenes to bring all of that together in partnership is the core of what collaborative working is and the secret of STEP’s success to date.