The role of reflection, reflection on roles: Practice-based innovation through theatre-based learning

Abstract

A key issue for practice-based innovation is: How can organisations generate innovation in the midst of action? In order to answer this question, this chapter discusses the relationship between learning, reflection, and practice-based innovation. Reflection is seen as an important organisational process that can create spaces for generative learning. The authors demonstrate how theatre-based learning can offer an effective strategy for the creation of reflective spaces that reveal the dynamics of innovation, both in terms of what promotes and what prevents innovative behaviour and practice. Through research and intervention in three organisations, the authors show that viewing roles and relations ‘acted out’ in theatre helps to reduce the unconscious acting out of entrenched emotional and political dynamics in practice. The struggle to create innovation in the midst of action can be seen in the reflexive tension between the radical possibility of such interventions and the political purpose they may serve for established power relations. There will always be a tension in organisations between dynamics that support innovation and dynamics that undermine it.