Our community work is studied as well as staged. Thomas De Angelis's research, much of it with colleagues at the University of Sydney, examines what happens to young people and communities when theatre is made in the places they live.
De Angelis, T. (2025). "Everyone mashed our ideas together to make this incredible story": Examining the impact of the Regrowth project. Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney. Supervised by Professor Michael Anderson.
The thesis examines applied site-specific theatre as a hybrid form of performance that engages directly with communities and environments after a crisis. It is a doctoral case study of one Regrowth workshop, in Pambula in April 2023, and follows five participants through personal and communal stories made in theatre. It found increased self-confidence, deeper engagement with environmental concerns, and stronger bonds with other participants and with the local community, and it argues for ethical, inclusive arts-based approaches in community, education and recovery settings. It is a single case over a one-week workshop.
Professor Emerita Robyn Ewing AM, Professor Michael Anderson and Eliza Oliver evaluated Regrowth for the CREATE Centre. They found that participants felt a greater sense of community and social connection, and that they felt listened to, in the workshops and in the public performance. The Regrowth Workshops: An Evaluation (PDF).
A short film about what TheatreConnect is.
TheatreConnect is a CREATE Centre program of week-long theatre workshops for young people aged 11 to 18 in South Western Sydney. It is also a research study, The TheatreConnect Study, led by the CREATE Centre. Researchers join in and observe the workshops and keep notes without names, and young people and teaching artists who choose to take part can be interviewed afterwards, with a parent or guardian's consent for young people. The study asks how young people describe taking part, which parts of the program help or get in the way of taking part, and how the group works together and how the workshops are led. Findings will be reported without identifying anyone, and none have been published yet. BBT teaching artists deliver the workshops for CREATE.