Ali Campbell, MA (Hons) Edinburgh

Contact details:

Tel: 0207 882 3793
Email: a.m.campbell@qmul.ac.uk
Room number: ArtsOne G.26

Research interests:

Applied Performance with Visual Practice
Large-scale Community Opera and Social Poetry
AIDS education through theatre (sub-Saharan Africa)
T.I.E/issue based performance in schools (drugs education; bullying and healthy living campaigns; work with young Muslim men)
London based work with marginal groups (refugees; elders; learning-disabled and disabled advocacy organisations; homeless; prisons)

As co-founder of BREAKOUT T.I.E (1982-92) I adapted the techniques of Augusto Boal such as Forum and Image theatre to school and community settings in the UK, including the UK’s first ACGB/Terrence Higgins Trust funded work on AIDS. I have been Artistic Director of Glyndebourne Youth Opera since 1991, and co-deviser of several large-scale community works including In Search of Angels (Peterborough Cathedral, 1995) the largest community performance of its kind in the UK.

As a British Council named artist in the Development field I have used the templates generated by such work to train NGO workers alongside theatre and music professionals across Europe (particularly the Balkans), Brazil, Malawi, Uganda, Burkina-Faso, Kenya, Eritrea, Egypt, Sudan and Syria. I received the Winston Churchill Fellowship Medal for my AIDS education work in Uganda in 1990.

I run experiential performance training which brings artists and marginal groups together in education outreach work for many major cultural institutions. These include the British Museum, ENO Baylis, Glyndebourne, RFH, Tate Modern, Chichester Festival Theatre and many leading orchestras including the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the City of London Sinfonia.

I work with London boroughs and LEAs to bring performance and visual practice into training settings, working with non-professionals to bring about social change. My work includes co-devising with Turkish/Kurdish refugees training for Hackney Housing staff, working on Advocacy awareness with People First (learning disabled adults) and carers from LB Newham and Redbridge, devising peer-led programmes on Emotional Literacy with school students and diet and environmental issues in Hammersmith and Fulham and across West Sussex.

I am an Elder of Friends’ House Meeting (Quakers) and a trustee of Quaker Social Action, working with marginal groups across East London.

Performance:

I have worked as a dramaturg with Graeae, Proteus and Lawnmowers each for ten years, with disabled, mental health and learning-disabled professionals respectively, in the field of advocacy and activism. I perform regularly with the Moving Sounds Collective of which I am a member and Shaping Voices (creative reminiscence work with Clare Whistler). My Glyndebourne debut with Glyndebourne Youth Opera was on the main stage in Elemental, 2003.

More recently I devised A Mile in My Shoes with People First (learning disabled adults) for PSI at Queen Mary, June 2006, and Living Myths with ENO professionals and homeless adults at the Lookahead Trust Hostel, November 2006.

Publications:

‘The Cockerel and the King’s Ear’, African Theatre: Youth edited by Martin Banham and Michael Etherton (Oxford: James Currey, 2006)

‘Imaging Northern Ireland’, Image and Imagination: writing from the Making Space Conference, Belfast 2002 edited by Janice Hoadley (Belfast: Stranmillis Press, 2003)

Walking the Downs: archaeology of the imagination (Lewes: Glyndebourne, 2000)

‘Reinventing the Wheel’, Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism. Edited by Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz (London: Routledge, 1993)

‘Falling or Flying?’ and ‘Questions from Rio’. Working Without Boal: Digressions and Developments in the Theatre of the Oppressed: special issue of the Contemporary Theatre Review edited By Frances Babbage, 3, 1, 1995

Anansi. (Walton on Thames: Nelson, 1992)