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Small Development Projects 2014 - Regent's University London - Enhancing relationships between executives and governors: an exploration through performance

Read about this project in the Times Higher article published on Thursday 5 March 2015 in the resource download below.

Original project proposal

Project leaders:

  • Professor Judith Ackroyd, Dean Humanities, Arts & Socials Sciences, Regent’s University London (RUL), Inner Circle, Regent’s Park NW1 4NS

    Principal investigator (Co-author Performing Research :Tensions, Triumphs and Trade-Offs of Ethnodrama)
  • Dr Jill Robinson, Head of School of Nursing & Midwifery, University Campus Suffolk (UCS), Ipswich IP4 1QJ

    Lead on interview strategy (Contributor to Performing Research :Tensions, Triumphs and Trade-Offs of Ethnodrama)

Collaborator 

  • Richard Conlon, Playwright and director, Lead on interview and performance direction

Steering group members:

  • Alison Johns, Head of Leadership, Governance and Management at Hefce
  • Professor Jonothan Neelands, Professor of Creativity, Warwick Business School
  • Dr Elspeth May, Retired university governor and Executive Coach
  • Professor Steve Newstead, formerly Acting VC at Plymouth and now on Trustee Board at Regent’s University London

Project administrative home:

Regent’s University London (RUL). Both RUL and UCS are members of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education

Aims & objectives

  • To create a unique performance script constructed from stories derived from 12 interviews with Vice Chancellors and HE governors, which meshes dialogue and contexts to ensure confidentiality.
  • To present a live performance bringing out tensions in the relationship between executives and governors which challenges audience members to reflect, to encourage the best leadership in UK HEIs.
  • To engender ‘successful interaction between leadership and governance’ (LF New mission statement), through discussion and analysis following the performance, which is made safely distanced through a fictionalising process.
  • To offer an innovative research-led approach to creating dialogue with stakeholders to gain sector intelligence (Elements of LF Strategy- modes of action) in a hard to reach community.
  • To explore the potential for learning in this tense HE landscape through a growing practice of research in performance, in which the project leaders have significant experience.
  • To establish materials that could be used in a further project to create a development pack or DVD and materials or website in order to provide sustainability for the research.

Methodology:

The performed research approach emerges as a complex hybrid engaging methodological and artistic terrains which challenge singular definition. The project falls into a developing field of work engaging a range of methodological practices and discourses, from documentary theatre and verbatim theatre to performance ethnography. Twenty years ago, there was a view that aesthetic assumptions could not sit with the methodological and theoretical aspirations of research. However, in a new context of interpretative research, where this is recognised in performance, this kind of research practice is emerging as a powerful approach to engage a wider audience in research data in a way that brings it alive and invites a more holistic interaction with that data. This kind of performance research is often developed to give voice to the marginalised, the silenced and the personal. Executives and governing boards are unrepresented voices in more traditional academic research. Now is the moment when the sector needs a thorough exploration of these voices and reflection on the dynamic and its impact.

This project would begin a workstream of academic applied research in HEI leadership development. It takes an entirely new approach to investigating the complexities of this relationship; a left field approach to notions of accountability and responsibility. The raw data gathered from the confidential interviews will be taken through a fictionalising process for anonymity, so that a safe-to-talk environment is established. Thus the interview detail that cannot be used directly, will be morphed into the script providing data by proxy. This area of work obsesses with the struggle between authenticity to the voices, and the artistic demands of performance required to maintain audience interest and to engage reflection.

In addition to disseminating the research findings, the performance event also contributes to further data collection. At each performance, the audience responses contribute to the data providing additional perspectives on the issues. The performance is not fixed and changes as this new data is woven into the script, so the live event can be conceived as a living document of findings.

The project will involve the following steps:

  • Participants will be recruited by word of mouth or invitations to volunteer using our own extended networks. Principles of procedure will be negotiated with each participant to ensure confidentiality and gain informed consent regarding use of data in our outputs and dissemination. They will not necessarily be executives and governors from the same institution.
  • In-depth interviews will be undertaken with each participant. Interviews will use a series of open questions and prompts to generate participant accounts of relationships between Chief Executive and governing bodies, their experiences of interactions and their perceptions of the organisational landscape and policy context within which these interactions occur.
  • Interview data will be transcribed and analysed using a narrative approach. The emerging narrative themes and overarching metanarratives will be used as the organising framework for the performance script which will be developed using a mix of verbatim data and fictionalised elements
  • The script will be sent to the interview participants to check its authenticity and scrutinise for any unintentional threats to anonymity.
  • The script will then be used as the basis for live performances in HEI leadership contexts through which dialogue between audience members will be elicited and used to shape future performances.
  • Participant feedback will be elicited to evaluate the extent to which the performance has facilitated reflection and raised awareness about the complexity of their relationships and strategies for improvement.

Outputs

  • The written script.
  • Live performances to governors and Chief Executives. An academic article to be submitted to a journal such as Applied Theatre Researcher and/or Leadership and the Humanities Journal.
  • Conference Presentation of aims and process at ‘Artistry, Performance and Scholarly Inquiry Symposium’, Melbourne University, July 2014.

Milestones : (quarterly)

1st quarter Identify participants

  • Ethics procedures
  • Preparing in-depth interview strategy
  • Schedule interviews

2nd quarter Interviews recorded

  • Transcriptions
  • Transcriptions checked by participants
  • Begin writing about the project process & deliver paper

3rd quarter Devise script

  • Rehearse and reassess script to complete performance

4th quarter

  • Prepare discussion to follow performance
  • Take at least 3 performances with discussion

Dissemination:

As well as through the more traditional routes of publication and conference presentation, dissemination will also be through innovative live performances at a range of venues where governors and executives are present. The Committee of University Chairs would be offered the work, as would London Higher, GuildHE and other bodies for executives. We would offer the performance to the LF for inclusion in leadership development opportunities. With more funding, the performance could be developed into a training DVD with questions and activities. Given the innovative nature of the project, we would invite journalists from THE to attend performances for potential wider dissemination.

VC and Governor Relationships make the stage
23/01/2017
VC and Governor Relationships make the stage View Document