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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which forum theatre interventions can support non-hierarchical approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives in organisations.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with theatre consultancies, actors/facilitators, commissioners and participants in two forum theatre events. The data were analysed through thematic coding using template analysis.

The findings show that the impact of forum theatre interventions was constrained by the need for practitioners to meet the requirements of their organizational clients. There was a lack of clarity by the facilitators about how they can carry out the role effectively and meet the expectations of their own managers, organizational clients and participants. The paper concludes that without explicit acknowledgement of these competing expectations or the facilitators ' beliefs and attitudes, the impact of such interventions may be reduced or diminished.

The study is relatively small-scale and there is a need for research across a wider range of theatre-based interventions to develop understanding of the ways in which such events can enable the development of non-hierarchical learning spaces.

The paper highlights the need for consultancies offering forum theatre interventions to understand the dilemmas of facilitators and provide a more pro-active approach to their learning and development needs.

There has been limited exploration of the facilitator ' s role in managing learning and development events in general and forum theatre in particular. This paper highlights the challenges to consultancies and HRD practitioners in implementing more democratic approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a possible way for service providers to learn from their customers' experiences and bridge gaps between their and their customers' perspectives. The research question is as follows: how can users' experiences be transformed through research‐based theatre, in particular Forum Theatre, into a utilizable format in the front‐end of interpretative, user‐driven service innovation in public health care organisations?

Research‐based theatre (RBT) is introduced in the study as both an artistic intervention technique – aiming to develop public health care services – and as a qualitative research method for interpretative user‐driven innovation processes.

The study provides a path for the application of Forum Theatre in interpretative user‐driven innovation and highlights the role of “the Joker” as a host of the interpretation.

Further studies could be based on international longitudinal participatory research and combine qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The study contributes to the discussion on the potential of innovation triggered in practical contexts. The potential itself seems to be relatively widely understood, but practical measures to exploit it still seem to be missing to a great extent. This study provides an example of a Finnish application of RBT as it explores the role of Forum Theatre as a sensemaking process in a fuzzy front‐end of innovation.

The study improves the understanding of the implementation of artistic interventions within a user‐driven service innovation in public health care services.

In this account of a study of a Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) intervention in a preservice teacher classroom, the authors explore an alternative way of learning to teach, as well as the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration between Theater and Education. Measures of racial and political attitudes did not demonstrate any change in the preservice teachers; however, several limitations made these findings inconclusive. Observations and journal entries suggested that interactive theater may be a promising way to make beliefs about teaching and learning visible, and therefore accessible for critical reflection.

The point that I wish to make is that we must be constantly aware of Shakespeare's “whining school-boy”, employ our pedagogy in the framework of its power, and be very humble while preaching our ideas, hoping to find the right way to bring a smile to the faces of our children. It is in this context that I wish to suggest a theatrical framework for teacher training, that is to say – theatrical representations of teaching as performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why theatre‐business links are relevant to management. The focus is on two types of links: using theatre techniques as a training method for managers, and using corporate theatre as a change management tool. The paper seeks to share an experience and tries to explicate the processes involved in order to explain the success of these two kinds of courses, both training theatre and corporate theatre (specifically, action theatre in this case).

This is a case study. Theatre has been taught for ten years at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business under the author's responsibility, and also the corporate theatre method is taught to initial students and to continuing training managers. This paper is based on those teaching experiences. To explain the relevance of both of theatre as a training tool and corporate theatre as a management tool, the author relates to both theories of body memory from neuroscientists and to the catharsis phenomenon.

The goal was to make hypotheses from the above theories which explain the process that takes place inside the manager undergoing training and to open further research.

Main limitations come from the lack of established empirical and relevant measures of the effects of such theatre processes on participants’ management abilities and from the lack of tools to measure the long‐term effects of theatre.

The most important implication is that practitioners could make more relevant use of such techniques when designing training sessions or utilizing corporate theatre interventions.

Social implications come from how the “human” face of theatre can help the personal development of managers, improving or changing their views on the world and other people.

Although theatre and business links are more than 20 years old, nobody has previously tried to understand the inner processes involved.

This paper aims to address the problems that diversity, by its nature, throws up for training professionals, and to highlight the various ways in which drama, as a learning tool, offers solutions to those problems.

The theory of experiential learning forms the back‐bone of the arguments proposed by the paper, and has many applications in the development and assessment of groups and individuals. While it focuses on a technique called “forum theatre”, all forms of drama‐based learning are founded on the theory of “learning by doing”.

The findings of the paper focus on the benefits of illustrating learning points through drama; encouraging creative thinking, risk‐taking, empathy and the use of conflict in a simulated environment to examine issues from all points of view.

These findings point to a need for an artistic and non‐directive approach to diversity training, one that is responsive to the sensitive and emotive nature of the subject. It also calls for organisations to encourage the embracing of differences within their workforces.

The learning points discussed offer a fresh perspective to diversity trainers. It suggests opportunities to address the root causes of prejudice without the risks that traditional training methods necessarily bring with them, and it is relevant to anyone involved in the design and delivery of diversity training.

In this chapter we share research findings from our collaborative research project ‘PASAR: Participatory Arts and Social Action in Research’ (http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/pasar), which combines participatory action research methods of participatory theatre and walking methods in order to understand the way in which racialized migrant women challenge their exclusion and subjugation in the context of the UK. The situation of migrant families in the UK is currently characterized by the ‘hostile environment’ policies. This policy ‘is a sprawling web of immigration controls embedded in the heart of our public services and communities. The Government requires employers, landlords, private sector workers, NHS staff and other public servants to check a person's immigration status before they can offer them a job, housing, healthcare or other support’ (Liberty, 2018, p. 5). The currently hegemonic political discourse, views migrants as outsiders to the nation and challenges their right to access welfare. Migrant families are cast as outsiders to citizenship, challenging the social and cultural cohesion of the nation. Indeed, UK immigration policies render it difficult for migrant families to secure their social and economic reproduction. Against this backdrop, the research explores how racialized migrant families develop their subjugated knowledges to claim belonging and participate in the society they live in. In this chapter, we share the key methodological findings, challenges and benefits of working with a PAR approach for co-producing transformatory knowledge with migrant families and advocacy organizations.

In line with the aims of this book, we reflect on the transformatory potential of research and knowledge for the common good through ‘alternative collaborative system of co-researchers and co-learners engaged in dialogue with civil society and social movements’ (Bacal, Introduction p. 1, see also Andersen and Frandsen, this volume).