Rasmussen & Wright: The Theatre Workshop as Educational Space Volume 2 Number 2

In this article, we claim a concept of education that allows a space for dealing with sensuous impressions, examining knowledge, experiencing disconnections, re-experiencing meaningful connections and learning "how to know." This is a different form of education than where the emphasis is merely on the "flow of information." Arts education, we argue, should not be a practice that is pre-designed, and hence textually ordered and contextually controlled, in order to better serve the expectations of any societal or cultural institution. In claiming this space, we need to deconstruct both the concept of "Aesthetic" and "Education" in order to find new ways of organising an education that is both aesthetic and playful. What we argue is that Dramatic Knowing is a form within the broader concept of a "cultural aesthetic," and highlight cultural production as distinct from merely socialising young people to arts canons or using theatre as an under-developed curriculum tool. Recent studies of youth culture (as referred) show that young people make the most of the intertextual play between fine art, popular art and everyday life, and it is in this area of "play" that we are able to uncover new models of drama education. In linguistic terms, dramatic knowing highlights a certain intentional, interactive, creative, and contextsituated production of meaning. This production takes place in theatre workshops, and two forms of workshops are described that reflect arguments made about education, partnership and the potential for youth culture research.