"Being Swedish and being yourself”: Dramatized research communication as democratizing work

What is the project about?

The project " “’Being Swedish and being yourself’: Dramatized research communication as democratizing work” creates new knowledge on the potential of children's theater to stage an inclusive Sweden. The results point to the ways that theater creates meeting places for psychosocial identification, social analysis, and critical reflection that contribute to civil repair. The purpose of the proposed communication project is to enable access to target groups for genuine dialogue and real change. The project will make cultural sociological analysis widely available, and disseminate findings on the ways that the lived experience of exclusion, in betweenness, privilege, solidarity, and hope for change can awaken in the stage-audience encounter. Research results will be made available to young people in minority groups in million-program home areas: groups that research often talks about but seldom with. The recognition gap that marginalized young people experience must be bridged. By sharing young people's experiences, needs, and ideas for an alternative society with professional groups outside the academic world, this project will enable and promote de-stigmatization processes. "Being Swedish and being yourself” is a collaborative project with researchers, artists, communication officers, and a theater producer and will create two audio dramas, one podcast, ten seminars and a popular science e-publication. The audio drama is a new way of disseminating research outside the research community. To realize the project, we are collaborating with professional expertise in the art field, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern Vällingby Husby and Dramaqueen, a leading performing arts producer in digital art.

The project's research questions

The purpose of the project is to reach out to groups where research results can lead to dialogue and debate and contribute to narrowing recognition gaps. The target group is young people and young adults with and without migration experience (especially in million-home program areas), professions in school and theatre, as well as cultural policy decision-makers and civil servants. The goal of the communication project is to spread and make available research on exclusion, in-betweenness, having multiple homes or no home at all, privileges, solidarity and hope for change that is awakened in a young audience in the encounter with theatre.

Participating institutions/universities

The project team consists of researchers at Stockholm University. Anna Lund, professor of sociology, Department of Sociology (PI); Rebecca Brinch, researcher at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics , and Ylva Lorentzon, assistant professor and the Department of Child and Youth Studies.

Links to project participants' websites

Anna Lund External link.:

Rebecca Brinch External link.:

Ylva Lorentzon: External link.