Grønland i sigte! Teater som et redskab til sociale forandringer i et oplevelsesøkonomisk perspektiv

On the one hand, Greenland is a society undergoing major social change and development in these years. Media are focusing on Greenland, debating climate changes and oil, and the country seeks to find foothold as centre of this attention. On the other hand, Greenland is a country, continuously, fighting for social and cultural liberation from a biased and stigmatizing colonial discourse. Greenland is in a limbo between these positions of development and deadlock, and this thesis is written in this borderland.

This thesis contains both academic analyses and a product targeted my collaboration partner. It is about Greenland, and the product of this thesis is targeted a Greenlandic context. C:NTACT Fonden (at the Betty Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen) is the collaboration partner of this process, and the product is designed for C:NTACT. C:NTACT’s theatre workshop in Paamiut in Greenland, autumn 2010, in which I participated as  project manager, is the central empirical basis for this thesis.

The purpose of the thesis is a) to analyse C:NTACT’s workshop in Paamiut in order to b) identify causes concerning the lack of rooting of C:NTACTs social work in a Greenlandic context. This leads to c) the design of a product useful for C:NTACT’s future work in Greenland.

C:NTACT was, in this workshop, concerned with a post colonial practice addressing the dominating and biased discourse about Greenland. This discourse makes it difficult to conceive what Greenland really is and, at the same time, it challenges the lives of modern Greenlanders by framing their identities on the background of an antiquated and biased colonial understanding of the Greenlandic society and culture

The massive social problems among young participants in this workshop also challenged C:NTACT’s work, and this is reflected in my consideration regarding the final design. 

In my thesis I am concerned with the theatre as a means of socially constructing new identities in process of change. Inside the framework of the theatre, identities are democratically and the performatively negotiated among different actors, and within this activity social empowerment of the individual human being is embedded. Theatre, as defined in a specific context, has the capability to problematize and challenge the understanding of identities as static, in the sense of not changing. In my thesis identity is comprehended as social constructions and therefore changeable. The theatre facilitates the framework for the individual to express his or her Entrepreneurship is theoretically and practically fundamental in the process of change and hence fundamental to both the theatrical work of C:NTACT and my own process of working with this thesis.     

Experience economy, as the analytical horizon for this thesis, should therefore not only be defined as some sort of consumption culture closely connected with corporate branding and marketing. Here I have tried to challenge this traditional understanding by applying the discipline in a social and entrepreneurial context.

“Social constructivism” and “performativity” are two theoretical ground positions.. The identity transforming potential of the theatre work, I have applied to the social constructivism, and, hence, it is analytically used in relation to the performative work of C:NTACT. As a student I am here shaped by dramaturgy and the experience economy, which therefore both, as academic disciplines are reflected in this thesis.

In relation to C:NTACT’s theatre workshop in Paamiut, Greenland, the main concern was how to root the results of this workshop in  society and thereby secure continuous social transformation processes. In the workshop C:NTACT did not succeed to do that. Therefore, my purpose in this thesis is, based on the analytic study, to design a product with the potential of rooting  the performative and social work of C:NTACT in the daily lives of Greenlandic youth. The question is, what can serve as a lasting tool for the identity work of Greenlandic young people? 

I have come up with a “rooting strategy” materialized in the two following designs:

1)   C:NTACT/blog – a digital “third space”: A blog feature which is meant to be incorporated into C:NTACT’s existing website (www.contact.dk). This co-created and self-directing digital universe, where stories, pictures, music and uploads are exchanged and posted, will have the potential of serving as a lasting tool for the identity work, and thereby root the work and ideas of C:NTACT. In addition, C:NTACT/blog will serve as a window for experiencing alternative stories about Greenland, which have never been told before, told by the Greenlandic youth. It will be a promotional response to a often generalised representation of their country.

2)   O.S.E. training: A training programme for teachers in Greenland in a collaboration between C:NTACT Fonden and Grønlands Seminarium. This programme focuses on theatre as an entrepreneurial tool for social change. In the longer term, this training programme will generate a new knowledge among Greenlandic teachers and educators on how to use theatre as a simple and entrepreneurial means to create social change.