Katie Beswick
Biographic Data
| ID | 642360 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katie Beswick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katie |
| FAMILY NAME | Beswick |
| SIGNATURE | BESWICK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Exeter |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7195-4416 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sonnets from the scrap-heap
This crown of sonnets (sequence of linked sonnets) presents the social, political and environmental landscape of vehicle waste, scrap metal and pollution, in the UK and beyond. Based on a short period of ethnographic research it uses the sonnet form to explore the possibilities of poetry-as-criticism for presenting the emotional and affective aspects of empirical research
Staging Grenfell
This article explores the ethical complexity of Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry (which opened in October 2021), a documentary ‘tribunal’ play that presents elements of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower tragedy-a fire in a social housing block in London, England, in June 2017 in which seventy-two people died. Locating the performance within a cultural and political landscape of deadly class inequity fostered by neo-liberal po…
Feeling working class
This article is a provocation, discussing the ways class measurement is complicated in efforts to understand participation and barriers to access for working class people. I explore class as a structure of feeling, emerging as a not-yet-worked through aspect of the theatre experience. I ask what would need to happen in theatre institutions if we took seriously people’s self identification, rather than relying primarily on external measures, and s…
Housing, performance and activism
This introduction proposes the potential of thinking with performance to address issues of global housing inequality. It introduces the housing crisis and offers an overview of articles in the special issue
Capitalist realism
This article thinks through how registers of ‘the real’ have operated in working-class representations, from social realism (in film, theatre, drama and soap opera) to reality television and appeals to ‘authenticity’ in publicity and marketing materials for cultural products purporting to represent the working class. It argues that the ubiquity of ‘the real’ in representations of working-class experience is one way in which Fisher’s ‘capitalist r…
Ten in a Bed
Ten in Bed was a project led by participatory arts organisation Phakama, in partnership with Queen Mary University of London. Over an eight-week period we ran a series of intermedial arts workshops and staged a performance with under five-year-olds and their families at a community centre in Bethnal Green, London. We attempted to enhance creative and communication skills, which are a key feature of critical literacy. In this article I use Lars El…
The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation
This article brings together three short 'provocations' presented by Katie Beswick, Harriet Hawkins and Joseph Kohlmaier. Between them, these provocations investigate the idea of how the archive of the city has and might be 'tapped' through a number of performative acts from a broad range of different perspectives, including the role of 'archival art'; performance, practice and competition in the context of the city; the body as an archive; the f…
Towards a Spatial Practice of the Postcolonial City
This article offers an introduction to the Interventions special issue, “Re-evaluating the Postcolonial City: Production, Reconstruction, Representation”. It institutes the cultural producer as its key reference point for re-examining the spatial imaginary of the postcolonial urban landscape. From internationally acclaimed artists, exhibition curators and marginalized performers to local audiences, tourist consumers, migrant workers, garbage coll…
X’ – realism, fantasy and heroism in the National Youth Theatre's The Block
In 2010, as part of the National Youth Theatre's social inclusion educational outreach programme ‘Playing Up 2’, young people identified as ‘NEETS’ (Not in Education, Employment or Training) performed a new-writing play called The Block, by first time playwright Tarkan Cetinkaya. This play is set on an unnamed London council estate, and follows the intersecting lives of 10 estate denizens, brought together by the central character, Barry/Baz, and…
A Place for opportunity
This article explores issues surrounding the representation of contested place by looking at the links between the Council Estate and social well-being in a specific project. The National Youth Theatre's The Block, was a new writing piece premiered as part of their 'Playing Up II' programme. Playing Up II attempted to offer access to higher education in the performing arts to those not in education, employment or training (NEETS). The article foc…
The council estate
The image of the archetypal housing estate is often used in popular representation, from documentary and television to music video, to symbolise the urban ‘grit’ of contemporary inner-city life. In the theatre, urban political and ‘working-class’ drama has been set on or around estates in attempts to deconstruct or expose the impact of life on these estates, or to examine what such places denote in contemporary society. The performance analysis p…
Capitalist realism
This article thinks through how registers of ‘the real’ have operated in working-class representations, from social realism (in film, theatre, drama and soap opera) to reality television and appeals to ‘authenticity’ in publicity and marketing materials for cultural products purporting to represent the working class. It argues that the ubiquity of ‘the real’ in representations of working-class experience is one way in which Fisher’s ‘capitalist r…
The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation
This article brings together three short 'provocations' presented by Katie Beswick, Harriet Hawkins and Joseph Kohlmaier. Between them, these provocations investigate the idea of how the archive of the city has and might be 'tapped' through a number of performative acts from a broad range of different perspectives, including the role of 'archival art'; performance, practice and competition in the context of the city; the body as an archive; the f…
The council estate
The image of the archetypal housing estate is often used in popular representation, from documentary and television to music video, to symbolise the urban ‘grit’ of contemporary inner-city life. In the theatre, urban political and ‘working-class’ drama has been set on or around estates in attempts to deconstruct or expose the impact of life on these estates, or to examine what such places denote in contemporary society. The performance analysis p…
A Place for opportunity
This article explores issues surrounding the representation of contested place by looking at the links between the Council Estate and social well-being in a specific project. The National Youth Theatre's The Block, was a new writing piece premiered as part of their 'Playing Up II' programme. Playing Up II attempted to offer access to higher education in the performing arts to those not in education, employment or training (NEETS). The article foc…
Towards a Spatial Practice of the Postcolonial City
This article offers an introduction to the Interventions special issue, “Re-evaluating the Postcolonial City: Production, Reconstruction, Representation”. It institutes the cultural producer as its key reference point for re-examining the spatial imaginary of the postcolonial urban landscape. From internationally acclaimed artists, exhibition curators and marginalized performers to local audiences, tourist consumers, migrant workers, garbage coll…
X’ – realism, fantasy and heroism in the National Youth Theatre's The Block
In 2010, as part of the National Youth Theatre's social inclusion educational outreach programme ‘Playing Up 2’, young people identified as ‘NEETS’ (Not in Education, Employment or Training) performed a new-writing play called The Block, by first time playwright Tarkan Cetinkaya. This play is set on an unnamed London council estate, and follows the intersecting lives of 10 estate denizens, brought together by the central character, Barry/Baz, and…
Ten in a Bed
Ten in Bed was a project led by participatory arts organisation Phakama, in partnership with Queen Mary University of London. Over an eight-week period we ran a series of intermedial arts workshops and staged a performance with under five-year-olds and their families at a community centre in Bethnal Green, London. We attempted to enhance creative and communication skills, which are a key feature of critical literacy. In this article I use Lars El…
The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation
This article brings together three short 'provocations' presented by Katie Beswick, Harriet Hawkins and Joseph Kohlmaier. Between them, these provocations investigate the idea of how the archive of the city has and might be 'tapped' through a number of performative acts from a broad range of different perspectives, including the role of 'archival art'; performance, practice and competition in the context of the city; the body as an archive; the f…
Feeling working class
This article is a provocation, discussing the ways class measurement is complicated in efforts to understand participation and barriers to access for working class people. I explore class as a structure of feeling, emerging as a not-yet-worked through aspect of the theatre experience. I ask what would need to happen in theatre institutions if we took seriously people’s self identification, rather than relying primarily on external measures, and s…
Housing, performance and activism
This introduction proposes the potential of thinking with performance to address issues of global housing inequality. It introduces the housing crisis and offers an overview of articles in the special issue
Capitalist realism
This article thinks through how registers of ‘the real’ have operated in working-class representations, from social realism (in film, theatre, drama and soap opera) to reality television and appeals to ‘authenticity’ in publicity and marketing materials for cultural products purporting to represent the working class. It argues that the ubiquity of ‘the real’ in representations of working-class experience is one way in which Fisher’s ‘capitalist r…
Staging Grenfell
This article explores the ethical complexity of Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry (which opened in October 2021), a documentary ‘tribunal’ play that presents elements of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower tragedy-a fire in a social housing block in London, England, in June 2017 in which seventy-two people died. Locating the performance within a cultural and political landscape of deadly class inequity fostered by neo-liberal po…
Sonnets from the scrap-heap
This crown of sonnets (sequence of linked sonnets) presents the social, political and environmental landscape of vehicle waste, scrap metal and pollution, in the UK and beyond. Based on a short period of ethnographic research it uses the sonnet form to explore the possibilities of poetry-as-criticism for presenting the emotional and affective aspects of empirical research
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Theatre and Performance Studies (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Media studies (5 works)