The Play's The Thing Partnership Project between Fircroft College, Women and Theatre Company, Birmingham Health Authority and Dudley Priority Health The Play's the Thing uses drama to raise issues about education and social exclusion. It is responsive and designed to meet the educational needs it identifies wherever possible. Funded by DFEE and managed by NIACE through the Adult and Community Learning Fund, it ran for two and a half years. The project was completed in April 2001. The project had three key aims: to raise issues about the barriers to education experienced by certain social groups by performing well-researched plays to audiences in health and community contexts; to record all post-play discussions about barriers to education as data for Needs Assessments studies; and to include all partners in the design of appropriate follow-up provision to meet some of the needs identified. In the first phase of the project the target audience was women who have become socially excluded. A play, Christine Goes To the Doctors, was performed in health and community contexts, and courses were designed from the needs identified in the post play discussions. Four residential courses and seven non-residential events were delivered at Fircroft College in 1999/2000 to fifty participants from the audience groups, which included many single parents and women who had experienced domestic violence. The courses were very successful, and all groups made return visits to attend other courses at the College. 20 per cent of participants have now enrolled for full or part-time Access courses. Further target audiences amongst socially excluded groups were identified, including people with mental health difficulties; older Asian women and the homeless. Theatre company and College personnel researched the educational barriers experienced by these groups, from which they wrote three powerful plays. Performances were placed in contexts which were appropriate to the group, and the model was then repeated in which needs were identified and a response designed. In the second phase the partners decided that the most useful response was to organise another tour of the plays to FE staff and college students to help them understand what happens when these groups try to take up mainstream educational opportunities. Student and staff opinions on the subjects raised are currently being reviewed, but already the staff response has been so positive that another tour of the play which focused on mental health difficulties is being arranged for staff development after the completion of the project.

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