Conflict resolution

Last year, Big Brum celebrated its 35th birthday. A remarkable milestone for any organisation, not least one that markets itself as a Theatrein-Education (TIE) company – a genre that is often derided for a perceived heavy-handed approach to issues like drugs or bullying. I ask the company's artistic director, Richard Holmes, about the ideology that informs Big Brum's practice.

‘At Big Brum, we believe in trusting the child,’ he says. ‘As drama practitioners and educators we proceed from the premise that children are not undeveloped adults but human beings in their own right, with specific experiences that go to the heart of being human. The work starts with two premises: that the world is knowable, and that art is social imagination. Art is a mode of knowing the world in which we live and Big Brum uses theatre and drama to work alongside young people to make meaning of their lives and the world around them, to educate their own minds not in what to think but how to think.’