Student/ Ellen:
I’m from the 2016 Creative Playground project. My name is Ellen. I’d like to introduce to you Ms. Lynn Yau. She is the CEO of The Absolutely Fabulous Theatre Connection.
Welcome. Research. Nurturing. Change. Theatre. Research. Culture. Change.

Lynn:
Hi, how old are you?

Student:
20.

Lynn:
Great! If I were 20 years old now, and I knew all I know now, then it’s great! And I can still work for many more years. I have quite a lot of paper with me, so I’ll sit here.
Thank you, Wai. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Zuni. Thank you for giving me the chance to talk about my most favourite topic, which is art education here. Is it ok for me to speak in Cantonese?

Woo:
There is simultaneous interpretation, so just go slowly. Speak slowly in Cantonese. OK.

Lynn:
Thank you to Dr Chan for talking about the situation in Taiwan. I think the education system in Hong Kong and Taiwan are very similar. I grew up in Hong Kong. I was born in Hong Kong. After my primary and secondary education, I finished my degree in the University of Hong Kong before furthering my study overseas. Hence, I have personal experience in and feeling about our education system. I never thought of engaging in artistic education, but now I find it very useful. I used to think that I didn’t need secondary education. With the arithmetic and reading skills I learnt from primary school, I could jump straight to university. I thought that I had learnt nothing from the secondary textbooks. I excelled in organising activities while in secondary school. The things that I did best all took place after school, such as organizing competitions, dramas, and many other things. Thanks to my not studying the lessons in the secondary school, I am able to do what I’m working on now, as I learnt a lot of things through organizing activities. So, I deeply feel that there is aspiration in our education, but there is also a lot of inadequacies. The Absolutely Fabulous Theatre Connection (AFTEC) would like to make up for some of the inadequacies.
Today, I want to focus on one thing: What is AFTEC? Many people ask if we engage in the theatre? What are we doing? First of all, I think that education is really experimentation. It’s also about experience and testing. A test for us, but not for you.
A week ago, 6 graduates with the Hong Kong Youth Theatre Award (HKYTA) went to a drug addiction treatment centre. They organized a 1-day drama workshop for 14 20-year-old drug addicts. We did it not because we were too idle with nothing to do. It’s because I think experience is actually the teacher in education. I’m not a teacher; I’m only a facilitator. The 6 youngsters are about 16 to 18 years old. The drama workshop was all planned by them. They discussed with me after working out a plan.
I gave them my comments, and then they made amendments. They conducted a workshop for the whole day. These 6 winners of the Bravo! Hong Kong Youth Theatre Award are younger than the students they taught. Our whole theatre is all about experiment. What is experimentation? What is experience? It’s the third cohort of the Bravo! Hong Kong Youth Theatre Award. It’s for full-time students of 13 to 18 years of age. It doesn’t matter whether you speak English or Mandarin. We are bilingual, all are welcome. We would provide training in drama, English and Cantonese. After one year of training, those selected will be sent to Cloud Gate Dance School in Taipei or LAMDA in England.
We started in 2008. At the time, the government introduced the Venue Partnership Scheme. As a theatre, we wanted to stage our production whenever a venue is provided. But it turned out that it didn’t work at all. In 2008, I, and our artistic director, Dr. Vicki Ooi, read a statement by Sir Brian McMaster, who was commissioned by the UK’s Department of Cultural, Media and Sport to report on: What is excellence in the arts in Britain? He said, “Too many organizations, particular in the performing arts, have been content to supply audiences with a superficial experience that provides immediate satisfaction, but no lasting impact.” This remark has actually become the core focus of our group.
What is impact? – What is it really? We are a charity organization. That’s not very important. We are bilingual. That’s also not so important. Sorry for creating confusions for the simultaneous interpreter. The programming team is responsible for the programmes. That’s not the most important. We think that the most important thing is change and impact. If we want to do teaching and learning, we want to call it “Learning and Participation”, because “education” carries too many burdens these days. So, I don’t want to use this term. What is “Learning”? There are 3 quotes that I like a lot.
The first one is: “Learning is what you do when you don’t know what to do”. When you don’t know what to do, you have to do something, and that is learning. The next one is: “By learn is meant the ability to do something which one could not previously do. It follows that to learn, there will be a change. “ If you want to learn, then there will be a change. The most important quote is from Vagna: “Learning is designed to produce meaning, the experience of the world as meaningful.” From these 3 quotes, you know that when you don’t know how to do something, you can learn to do it. If you learn, there will be a change. What’s most important is that the living world provides experiences, which cannot be learnt from the textbooks. So that’s why the AFTEC has become an organisation for learning.
We are a theatre for education. It should be a theatre for learning. It’s not only us who provide the learning. I myself am learning, and so is everyone else, because there are a lot of things that we don’t know. The AFTEC itself is an experiment. We try and see how to make use of the experience from culture and art to bring about changes. We do not follow the pedagogy of main stream education. We look for alternative pedagogies. The most important question is: “What kind of change?”
What is in fact the goal of our theatre?
First, we focus on youngsters. This kind of playground is very important, because we don’t really know how to play anymore. We only study by reading books. We adopt the theory of a Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. He introduced the concept of “Zone of Proximal Development”. It questions that if we learn without the help from other people, how much can we learn? The answer is not much. But with some guidance, we can progress to a higher level. The gap between the two ways is called “Zone of Proximal Development”. We have to teach according to the students’ abilities, so many programmes are like the Bravo project. We take in only a small number of people, not too many, because we want to be more focused in our teaching. In the past 8 years, we did a lot of things. After some trials, failures and retrials, we have accumulated experiences, and then there is practice and theory. When you study education, there is a saying, “Theory informs practice”. It means that theory comes first, then there will be practice. But looking at the birth and development of our theatre, we have practice first and then theory, and the theory is constantly changing.
The word “Education” is derived from Latin, “Educat”, which means to lead. “Assessment” in Latin is “Assidrie”, which means “sit besides”, sitting beside you. And there are many words with the prefix “ex”, such as extracurricular, experience and experiement. The prefix “ex” means outside. The word “learning” means to find a path. In the education system, “learning” or “education” is not about examination and test. Instead, it is about sitting beside a person and accompanying him in his development. We advocate this mode of learning. But a problem arises. And that is time.

I will read you a passage quickly. It’s from a young Bravo student, Ariel, and he is a third-year student in the APA. He is one of our first batch of graduates. He went to London, and he said, “It’s hard to become a patient person in Hong Kong. Everything in this city is about efficiency. The moment you slow down, you are immediately forced to catch up and speed. But I think it is very important to take time and feel with your heart. Learning also takes time. There is no short cut. In terms of respect and sense of responsibility, there is something we can train in Hong Kong. The learning environment in London worked magic and transforming us.”
Time is a big issue. In fact, time is in our hands. I think we can shorten our curriculum. We don’t need so many things but rather we should deepen our discussion, especially we need to experiment and discuss. After so many years, we now have 3 levels of learning. The first is the entry level. Level 1 is about learning and participation. Every year, there is a grand plan, and there are 13,000 students.
Just on the entry level. Level 2 is in fact the Bravo Scheme, and there are other programs as well. Level 3 is called “Arts for Change”, that is arts changes life. This year, we have published a small booklet on Social Impact Assessment. This is just preliminary, and we look at what impacts the whole Bravo Scheme have on the youngsters. I have 3 to 4 copies with me, so please take one if you are interested.
After 7 years of work in the experiment, we have come up with a preliminary “Theory of Change”. How should we change? Reflection, asking questions, inner reflection, interaction with other people, real awareness of social experiences, identifying problems, multi-dimensional thinking, taking risks, reducing fear about taking risks. It’s the fear that Dr. Chan has just talked about. Personal change, sense of responsibility, and perseverance.
Back to time again. What you learn in 2 to 3 days won’t have much impact, and actually, the impact is probably very limited. If the program is longer, it would be better. We have 3 teaching cores and pedagogies. The first one is “Inquiry-based Teaching and Learning”. It means that we have to make enquiries and reflections all the time. For instance, we brought a group of young people to London. They visited the British Museum. There, they were given the room “Greek Elgin Marbles”, and they are divided into 4 teams for reflection and debates. The topic is, should the collection and exhibits of the British Museum be returned to their respective countries of origin? It seems to be unrelated to drama, but the thinking and exploration help them jump out of the classroom and even the theatre to look at the world. On their return, many young people told me that they finally understood why a museum is not a dead thing. A museum is alive and is closely linked with us.

At the second level, we want to work on generation topics, which entails many enriched materials. I’m not talking about quantity. Hong Kong is known for “the more the better” attitude, so everything has to be quantifiable. The bigger the better.
I’m really talking about generative topics. One example is- primary students taking trams. They take trams not because they haven’t taken the tram before, well, though in fact, many of them haven’t taken the tram, but because they will integrate the route of the tram ride with the path of their life. This kind of thinking will not happen only in the classroom. The third one is about crossing domains and disciplines. We teach year 1 and year 2 medical students from the University of Hong Kong, about 150 to 200 students every year. What do we teach? They are elite 5-star students, and we are visiting artists. They are curious and they have no idea what we are about. Through drama movement and music, they played with us.
Medical humanities are very important. If you want to be a good doctor, you need to know more than medical science and medicine. What about your benevolent heart? So, experiments and experiences are essential. If I can do a complete overhaul of the education system, I will reduce the number of programmes by half and the timetable will be broken up. Then we will work on projects with people of different age groups. We will explore through art.
Thank you.

Woo:
Thank you, Lynn