Abstract
My role in the Radical Hope Project was dual, as researcher and as drama facilitator. In terms of the research, I acted as principal investigator for the Greece site and as drama facilitator, I collaborated with my very experienced colleague, Nikos Govas, to carry out the majority of the workshops in Greece. The data illuminated in this chapter derive from two different schools in Attica (a suburb of Greece), with two different groups of students (a 13-year-old group and a 12–15 year-old group) who took part in the first year (Verbatim Theatre practices) and the third year (Collaborative Devising practices) respectively. My chapter analyzes the function and the impact of the Radical Hope Project, focusing specifically on the ways in which the theatrical, pedagogical and methodological practices of the project allowed two pressing social issues, namely Greece’s financial and the refugee crises, to find their way into the classrooms through the students’ own narratives and theatrical work. In this context, I demonstrate how the project enacted a methodology that invited students to disclose their perspectives and experiences, gaining both new knowledge and new relationships as a group in order to address the crises bearing down upon their daily young lives in unyielding ways.
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Notes
- 1.
In Greece there is also a great deal of “non-registered labor,” and the crisis similarly impacted this kind of work. These rates of non-registered unemployment are not covered by official numbers, but unofficial statistics of non -state organizations estimate unemployment over 30%. Also, much of the employment offered during the crisis consisted of part-time jobs, bringing in poor income and resulted in a dramatic decrease of overall salaries. According to an official Press Release of Hellenic Statistical Authority, in 2017, 38.4% of the Greek population lived in danger of poverty and social exclusion with an income close to the poverty line of a mere 4560 euros per year for a single person and 9576 for a family consisting of two adults and two dependant members. See also http://www.statistics.gr/documents/20181/a08ebe8c-c675-4a06-a0db-397d180ef7f6.
- 2.
Especially in the educational landscape, the effects of the crisis reached their peak between 2011 and 2016. Recent research provides evidence of severe underfunding of education that has led to schools’ insufficient infrastructure including building maintenance, technological equipment (Doliopoulou, 2015), office supplies (Alexiou 2012), lack of educational resources in teaching basic subjects such as math, language, and science, a decrease in educators' salaries (OECD, 2013), a simultaneous increase in working hours, and an overall lack of staff (Kantzara, 2016, p. 37). These experiences must be contextualized by taking into account that teachers are asked to perform a great range of top-down initiated changes in their work (i.e. evaluation of educational work) without in-service education and support. Moreover, some of the changes in education regulations place their working status at risk (and in the case of substitute teaching staff, their job) (Alexiou, 2012; OECD, 2013; Ziontakh, 2014). According to recent research, most secondary teachers report negative experiences and feel disappointed about a lack of support to ensure high-quality educational provisions (Avgitidou et al., 2017).
- 3.
All the students’ names are pseudonyms.
- 4.
We defined “hope-stories” as those that answered the conceptual questions of the research project related to hope (ex: what gives me hope?) and “care-stories” as the stories concerned the conceptual questions of the research regarding what and whom young people cared for.
- 5.
According to the political philosopher Cornilius Castoriadis, each society institutes its human world (“‘things,’ ‘reality,’ language, norms, values, ways of life and death, objects for which we live and objects for which we die”) through its instituted collective representations which educate children of a society, indicate what is good or wrong, what is justice and injustice, etc. (Castoriadis, 1999, p. 12). Therefore, a reality, a practice, a habit that is instituted by a society has its own distinctive space and value, and subsequently, results. For example, if a society institutes public space and time in which citizens can exercise dialogue and action, it coincidentally creates a practice in which people can exercise their democratic rights. However, according to Castoriadis, for a society to be really democratic it needs to be an instituting (instead of a permanently instituted society) because that is how institutions become a process, namely an activity of changing basic rules, terms, practices with reference to the needs and the given circumstances (1999, p. 27). In this context, and taking into account the ways in which the practices of Radical Hope interacted with the Greek school and the groups of students, I am approaching Radical Hope as a method of creating an instituting space to practice care because it institutes a clearly defined space, time, and practice for students to reveal themselves, their realities and care for each other, while, at the same time, it gives participants themselves the possibility to re-create–change the terms or the procedures–according to their own experiences, narratives and performances.
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Pigkou-Repousi, M. (2020). The Politics of Care in Indifferent Times: Youth Narratives, Caring Practices, and Transformed Discourses in Greek Education Amid Economic and Refugee Crises. In: Gallagher, K., Rodricks, D., Jacobson, K. (eds) Global Youth Citizenry and Radical Hope. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 10. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1282-7_6
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