After attending the campus session surrounding tools of professional inquiry and discussing each others questions it became evident that in order to start looking at what our tools will be we need look at where our answers lie! The answer to my question lies in the theatre companies focusing on knowledge gathering therefore the basis of my inquiry will be qualitative research.
I plan to pick roughly five companies to focus on and I will thoroughly research their work and compare what that are doing in terms of enriching and enhancing a child's experience of theatre. This research will lie within the company websites and literature. I think five is a good number as it gives me scope to compare but is also realistic within the time frame that I have. Once I have chosen the companies I would like to explore I plan to contact them and hope to get access to the programmes that they have in place in order to see them in action and not just in written format. The level of access I am given will affect my inquiry but I am hopeful that those opportunities will be there in my current workplace and networks that I have operated within throughout my career. Although this is a new field for me to explore the inspiration stems from my experience and I hope this will help me in gaining the information that I need. However some of the companies I would love to gain an understanding of are completely out of my network. I am being hopeful that this does not mean that they are unobtainable but I am also realistic about how important the way in which I contact them can be. Every company will have a gatekeeper that I need to address in the correct way in order to talk to the right people. Drawing from experience I have from working as a recruitment resourcer, events organiser and workshop bookings coordinator I feel I have a good knowledge to work from. I was responsible for talking to schools, universities and companies to secure booking and opportunities stemming from cold calls. These are a few points I need to consider:
- Be 100% clear on what I am asking for before making any form of contact.
- Extensively research the company and the work they do.
- Find the names of the people I need to talk to.
- Really think about my form of contact. Email - spend time on the writing. Call - have notes in front of me regarding what to say.
- Think about any benefits the company may gain.
- Formulate an understanding of the ethics behind exploring a companies work in a research project.
Observations
This will be the primary tool for my inquiry. I will be observing the work of the companies in question and analysing the tools that they are using to enhance and enrich a child's experience of theatre. I will need to consider if I will be an observer on the outside looking in or a participant reflecting after the experience. I think both formats would be beneficial to understand their work and it's effects. These observations may lie in actor workshops, teacher CPD sessions and facilitator led discussion. I am hoping that I will come across other avenues to observe that I do not know know of. The answer as to whether a companies work is in fact enhancing and enriching a child's experience will in theory lie with asking the children. However I do not feel that gathering information from children will be feasible in my inquiry so the answer will be in my observations and speaking to those involved in the work because my emphasis is on what the companies are doing. As my inquiry develops this may affect my question wording but only slightly.
Interviews
I feel that I will use this tool alongside my observations to gain a better understanding of the companies and their work. It would be great to interview a programme leader or actor involved in a workshop to ask their opinion on how their work is enriching and enhancing the child's experience. I think I will need to be careful not to ask questions that I could find by taking the time to research as this could be deemed as annoying. The interview would be based around getting a personal view to work alongside my paper research asking mainly why? and how? questions. Having worked in a recruitment role where I interviewed lots of people every day I feel that with careful planning I could put together the right questions to find the answers I wanted.
Focus Groups
I do not feel that this tool will help in my inquiry. Although I plan to conduct an interview if possible I am not trying to gain mass opinions I am trying to gain a detailed understanding. The only way I can see this working is if I am talking to a group of workshop leaders about their experiences but I feel I would gain more from asking that in a one-to-one scenario.
Surveys and Questionnaires
I do not feel that this tool will be beneficial to my inquiry. As my focus is on what London theatre companies are doing and in turn the effect it is having a survey or a questionnaire is not going to further my knowledge. I am not looking to collate mass information I am trying to look closely at work that is going on.
Hollie xx
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