Artful Thinking and Questioning to Support the Curious Mind

The workshop presentation will affirm the centrality of story and an active questioning ethos within drama education. The presenter will use an interactive approach with the audience to exemplify practical and artful ways of working which can stimulate and support students' ability to identify and explore the questions they are seeking answers to within a selected painting, and how such questions are fundamental to their learning and understanding. The content of the session will focus on the potential power of a painting to evoke questions in the minds of young people. Consideration will be given to how paintings and drama strategies can nurture young people's curiosity and motivate them to engage, communicate and participate creatively and collaboratively within the classroom. The presenter will also practically demonstrate how the students' emotional and intellectual communication can be purposefully supported and extended as they explore the moral decisions, dilemmas and human conflicts contained in the plot and confronted by the characters in each story. Specific focus will be given to how the key drama processes used by the presenter can enable students to understand more deeply human behaviours and responses in fictional contexts, and how this in turn can support the students' in their ability and desire to create and communicate their own stories within arts contexts.