Performing to understand: cultural wealth, precarity, and shelter-dwelling youth

ABSTRACT

Collaborating with Project: Humanity, an acclaimed socially engaged theatre company, we mobilized, over 16 weeks, an applied theatre methodology of drama workshops and traditional qualitative research methods to explore issues of spatialized inequality and localized poverty with a youth shelter community in Toronto, Canada. Observations gleaned through drama activities provided graphic evidence of the multiple and overlapping socio-economic pressures and limited infrastructural and personal support experienced in their young lives. In this article, we use critical race theory to trouble majoritarian narratives of access, capacity, and success. In particular, Yosso’s [2005. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 8 (1): 69–91] typology of ‘community cultural wealth’ has allowed us to reconsider the idea of ‘capital’ as it is exploited by youth in creative engagement with the material precarity of their daily existence.

KEYWORDS:

• Applied theatre methodology
• shelter-dwelling youth
• cultural wealth
• critical race theory

Acknowledgements

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the view of the NCRP or the funder.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Kathleen Gallagher is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto. Her books include, In Defence of Theatre: Aesthetic Practices and Social Interventions (with Barry Freeman, 2016); Why Theatre Matters: Urban Youth, Engagement, and a Pedagogy of the Real, 2014; The Theatre of Urban: Youth and Schooling in Dangerous Times, 2007; Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities, 2000; Drama and Theatre in Urban Contexts (with Jonothan Neelands, 2013); How Theatre Educates: Convergences and Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars, and Advocates (with David Booth, 2003), The Methodological Dilemma: Creative, Critical and Collaborative Approaches to Qualitative Research, 2008.

Dirk J. Rodricks is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. He most recently co-authored a critical race theory monograph with the ASHE Higher Education Report, 2015, and contributed to RiDE’s 20th anniversary issue. He uses applied drama to explore multiple-marginalized identity in diaspora through a critical anti-racist lens.

Notes

1. Education is under provincial jurisdiction in Canada. However, indigenous/aboriginal education remains under federal jurisdiction. Many urban policies, including urban public schooling, continue to impact large populations of urban indigenous people, especially in socio-economically marginalized neighbourhoods.

2. It may be useful for readers to know that the song ‘If I had a million dollars’, by Toronto indie band, Barenaked Ladies, though not of the era of our youth (released as it was in 1988), would likely be known by them. We encourage readers to give the song a listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4L3ls_6UYg and take note of the playful but very apt lyrics.

3. Black Lives Matter is a social movement that campaigns against violence to the black body. It has captured the minds and hearts of many young people across North America (Bradford Edwards and Harris 2016).

4. For a detailed look at the impact of a drama process on the ‘navigational capital’ shared among youth through the process of working, see Gallagher (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This study and its dissemination is supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number #895-2011-1004] which has funded the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership (NCRP) based at the University of Toronto.