Bobby Smith
Bobby is a practitioner-researcher based at Warwick University. He collaborates with artists, researchers and communities to explore themes including climate crisis, conflict and justice through socially engaged arts. Bobby is a co-editor of ATR: Socially Engaged Performance, and his recent publications include Theatre and Global Development: Performing Partnerships (2024) and a co-edited issue of Research in Drama Education exploring climate crisis (2024).
Spectacles of violence: socially engaged arts and dis:connectivity in the polycrisis
This project examines how socially engaged arts respond to the global polycrisis. Considering case studies including art co-created with young people, and festivals and performances involving transnational collaboration, Bobby asks how socially engaged arts function as relational practices to foster solidarity and critical reflexivity. The goal is to identify how socially engaged arts expose and navigate tensions between globalised ideologies and local agency, policy and reality, centre and margin. Disconnection can hinder solidary and change, while offering spaces in which to reimagine power and futurity from the edges.
Have a look at Bobby’s research poster about his project.