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This study explores how the participants from Livet Bitch performing arts business experience how others view people from Södertälje with a focus on media representation. How do the participants respond to the media image within the framework of Livetbitch's performing arts activities? The consequences of the mediaimage for the participants performing arts practice are also problematized. In order to explore the study's initial questions, a postcolonial feminist perspective is applied. The study shows that the participants' experiences of how others view those who come from Södertälje are complex. Partly the participants oppose the media image and partly they also agree with the media image based on certain aspects. When it comes to the participants' performing arts, participants believe that people with a foreign background from the suburbs often have to act as deputies to break norms, which according to several of the participants means that they become unfree in art. Within the framework of Livetbitch, however, several different aspects of resistance can be found. These strategies are linked to Livetbitch's various film and performing arts productions as well as to the design of the business, i.e. to its similarities with the community theatre.

The subject of this study is a community theatre for, with and by girls aged 13–17. The theatre practice is situated within the field of applied theatre and as a communitarian practice engages with artistic, social and political ambitions by staging the everyday of marginalised people. When describing and researching these kinds of theatre practices, emphasis is often placed on their democratic potential and positive notions of empowerment. However, the challenges which arise when participants with little or no previous theatre experience are to perform their lives in front of an audience are not often discussed in research. Accordingly, the aim of this ethnographic study is to explore how the participants’ lives are turned into creative and artistic expressions in the drama room and staged in front of an audience. By working with post-constructionist and spatial theories, humans as well as space, place and affectivity are acknowledged as co-producing actors. These theoretical positions, articulated by philosophers such as Rosi Braidotti, Gillian Deleuze and Michael Foucault, enable an analysis of how place, playfulness and vulnerability influence the theatre practice and how it simultaneously produces both possibilities and constraints for the girls. In four articles, the study addresses how tensions are produced in the process of staging the everyday. Article I engages with Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, addressing how the drama room is co-created with local context while also being an isolated room. Through an analytical mapping, the article discusses how theatre practice enables the girls to act creatively in relation to limiting norms in the drama room and other places such as school. Article II focuses on how vulnerability is both a generative and restrictive force when creating artistic expressions. The study points towards the importance of professional leadership that can navigate through multilayered spaces that are explorative as well as artistic. Ar

In this presentation the risks and potentials of staging vulnerability in a community theatre practice with teenage girls will be explored. This presentation will explore vulnerability as a potentially generative matter that enables resistance in line with Judith Butler (Butler, 2016). The empirical material in this presentation comes from a one year ethnographic study following the theatre-groups’ work creating a performance based on girls’ stories and experiences of becoming woman in a particular Swedish town (Szatek, 2021). Exploring how vulnerability becomes a generative, or restrictive force in the performance work, the tensions produced in the process are discussed with the aim to highlight the multitude of ethical dilemmas that arise when staging the everyday through participatory methods. One such dilemma is how aesthetic spaces emerge when interwoven with spaces of vulnerability. By drawing on post-constructionist (Lykke, 2010) and spatial theories (Massey, 2005) this presentations also intend to discuss is the embeddedness of the drama practice as it merges with, and challenges, the local context and the participants’ everyday life.

In the following article, based on two years of participatory ethnographic field-work with the No-border musical, as well as interviews with 16 of the musical’s 30 participants, community theatre is investigated in a context of deportability. We analyse the working process in the theatre group, in which actors with and without resident permits participated, through the concept of politics of translation. We show how inequalities due to the constant threat of deportation for several members, were put to the forefront during the work process of creating the musical. It concerned risks of detection for the undocumented participants as well difficult living conditions related to deportability (for example insecure access to livelihood, healthcare, housing etc.). The article conceptualizes various dimensions of working together in a group where participants live in unequal conditions as a politics of translation. This concept includes the work of language translation, and also captures translations of the different experiences mentioned above, and how different positions of power can be handled and understood, within a group who has the ambition to work together, in this case with a theatrical performance. Our analysis shows how theatre in a context of asylum rights activism can challenge and create alternatives to the conditions of deportability, whilst these simultaneously condition the activism and translation. The article contributes to knowledge about mobilization in the context of vulnerability and inequality. We hope to also contribute to a development of critical social work both within and outside of academia., Med utgångspunkt i två års deltagande etnografiskt arbete med skapandet av föreställningen No Border Musical, samt intervjuer med 16 av dess 30 deltagare[1], undersöks i denna artikel communityteater i ett sammanhang av utvisningsbarhet. Vi analyserar arbetsprocessen i denna teatergrupp i vilken skådespelare med och utan uppehållstillstånd deltog, med hjälp av begreppet översättningspolitik. Vi visar hur ojämlikheter på grund av att delar av ensemblen levde med hot om utvisning villkorade arbetsprocessen. Det handlade dels om risken för att deltagare skulle avslöjas som papperslösa och därmed med stor sannolikhet frihetsberövas och utvisas, dels om de svåra levnadsvillkor som kom av att leva under hot om utvisning. Vidare begreppsliggör vi olika dimensioner av att arbeta tillsammans i en grupp där deltagarna lever under så ojämlika förhållanden som en översättningspolitik (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013). Detta begrepp inkluderar arbete med översättning mellan olika språk men fångar även betydelser och hantering av de olika erfarenheterna nämnda ovan, samt hur olika maktpositioner kan förstås och ta sig uttryck, inom en grupp som har ambitionen att arbeta tillsammans, i detta fall med skapandet av en teaterföreställning. Vår analys visar hur communityteater i ett sammanhang av asylrättsaktivism kan utmana och skapa alternativ till utvisningsbarhetens villkor, samtidigt som dessa också villkorar aktivismen och översättningspolitiken. Artikelns analys bidrar till kunskap om mobilisering i ett sammanhang av utsatthet och ojämlikhet. Vår ambition att bidra till en utveckling av kritiska sociala arbeten såväl inom som utanför akademin. [1] Detta fältarbete låg till grund för Södermans avhandling (skriven på engelska för en internationell publik). I den föreliggande artikeln fördjupar och utvecklar vi ett perspektiv i avhandlingen, nämligen det av en översättningspolitik (Mezzadra & Nielson, 2013).

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur pedagogiska dramametoder kan användas i socialt arbete för att öka reflektion i den professionelles arbetsliv. Vidare undersöktes huruvida verksamheter som arbetar med pedagogiska dramametoder bidrar till att uppmärksamma och stötta utsatta och marginaliserade grupper i samhället. Informanter från olika verksamheter i södra Skåne presenterade i sex halvstrukturerade intervjuer olika kreativa arbetsmetoder som de använder sig av. Informanterna arbetar bland annat på uppdrag av statliga och kommunala verksamheter, men även med egna fristående produktioner för att bearbeta olika etiska frågor i samhället. Då dramapedagogiska metoder har visat sig bidra till djupgående och aktiva reflektioner är resultatet att dessa metoder kan användas som gynnsamma komplement och alternativ till traditionell handledning. Vidare har olika pedagogiska dramametoder visat sig bidra till att synliggöra marginaliserade människor och öka empowerment. De nedskärningar som görs i kulturbudgeten påverkar således inte bara kulturlivet i sig utan i förlängningen även samhället och det sociala arbetet. De kreativa metoderna skulle kunna nyttjas i mycket större skala, då de har genuin potential för socialt förändringsarbete., The purpose of this study was to investigate how educational drama methods can be used in social work to increase reflection in the professional’s work life. Furthermore, it was studied whether organizations that work with educational drama methods contribute to supporting vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. I made six semi-structured interviews with informants from different organizations in southern Sweden that presented different creative working methods that they use. The informants work, among other organizations, on behalf of governmental and municipal organizations, but also with their own independent productions to process various ethical issues in society. Since educational drama methods have proven to contribute to in-depth and active reflections, the result is that these methods are favorable complements and alternatives to traditional supervision. Furthermore, various methods that the informants work with have proven to contribute to increased empowerment of marginalized individuals and they have also given them a chance to get their voices heard. The cuts made in the cultural budget therefore not only affect the cultural life itself but likewise the society and social work. The creative methods could be used on a much larger scale, as they have genuine potential to affect change in our society.