Dr Jimmy Turner, Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh and the Active Inquiry theatre company worked together over 18 months on a research and development phase of a project titled Drama for Democracy.

Based in Leith, the Active Inquiry theatre company have been working on a long-term Legislative Theatre project called Drama for Democracy, which hopes to encourage the use of Scottish theatre spaces as sites for participatory democracy.

The Binks Hub were invited to collaborate on the pilot of the third phase of the project, assisting in research and development and reflecting on the work achieved in the first two phases of the project. In May 2023, Dr Jimmy Turner and Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh led workshops analysing the scripts and performances developed on the project so far. Their goal was to identify key themes across performances done by three groups of participants, aiming to bring all the work that had been done separately into one cohesive concept that could form the basis of a new performance. This new performance would focus on how they could enact policy change and how to create a concrete impact on the world.

The participants who had so far been involved in the first two phases of the project were comprised of amateurs with varied and very marginalised, often precarious backgrounds. As such, the quality of their research for ‘non-researchers’ was very impressive, highlighting an incredibly astute analysis of society. The knowledge exchange went strongly in both directions as participatory theatre was a relatively unknown or untested area for the Binks Hub, and a lot was learned from the Active Inquiry participants.

Although the Binks Hub were initially brought on board to help steer the research and development impact at a pilot level, the relationship between the two organisations grew into a wider collaboration and a much weightier involvement in crafting the final performance.

In tandem with Civic Digits, a digitally-minded organisation working to challenge norms and encourage a more egalitarian society, the Binks Hub and Active Inquiry worked through how to take participatory theatre into the realm of Legislative Theatre. This began in Autumn 2023 and culminated in an initial performance in March 2024 at The Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith. This was comprised of a short scene entitled ‘Can you afford not to?’ that can be performed and improved with audience participation, aiming to produce policy ideas and how to make them manifest. From this initial performance, the group revised their work and a second iteration was performed at the University of Edinburgh in June 2024.

These theatrical outputs will serve as the foundation for the next phase of the project. The Binks Hub’s collaboration is still ongoing as Active Inquiry wait on funding to proceed with the third phase of Drama for Democracy.