Practising Radical Hope 

13 September 2026

As part of our Leading with Purpose Reflections series, Stella has written this piece in response to the essay by Dr Chrissie Tiller: Spaces of Possibility and Pockets of Hope. It forms part of a wider conversation within A New Direction’s Leading with Purpose: Cultural Education in Practice Programme - a series of publications, conversations and events exploring the future of leadership in cultural education.

I’m writing this at the end of summer 2026. Severe and record-breaking heatwaves have hit Britain and Europe; conflicts in the world are escalating and this country is more divided than I have ever known it to be. When I was young, I imagined a future that was more just, safer and more equitable than the world we live in now. In my imagined Utopia, instead of algorithms determining the information we receive and politicians and the press sowing fear, division and violence, I envisioned that we would be free to share our knowledge and creativity without censorship. We would be united in solidarity and in overcoming oppression. We would be inspiring our children with hope rather than fear.

In what seems like a dystopian time, I’m grateful to Dr Chrissie Tiller for her beautifully written and articulate piece: Spaces of Possibility and Pockets of Hope. The title itself makes me feel optimistic.

By reminding us of the value of pedagogy, the tradition of radical education and educators, the potentially transformative impact of children participating in arts and culture, and the importance of value-led practice, Tiller lays out a manifesto for a future where:

cultural education can begin to offer [children and young people] pockets of hope. By supporting them in understanding how they can be part of building that fairer, juster world, it can also turn spaces of learning into the locations of possibility.

She reminds us that hope is a radical act and that through creativity, we can help children and young people to imagine and build a better future.

Drama in Education

While reading Tiller’s article, I found myself reflecting on my long history in the arts and where it began.

I come from a long line of teachers. I was raised by parents who were radical educators, influenced by the exceptional drama-in-education pioneer, Dorothy Heathcote. My mother trained with Heathcote and my father was a guest lecturer on her Postgraduate Diploma in Drama in Education course at Newcastle University.

As a child, I experienced Heathcote’s ‘in-role drama’ before I ever experienced acting. While at Bretton Hall College studying for my degree, I wrote my dissertation on her method of teacher-in-role, with the aim of working in theatre in education.

Heathcote’s pedagogy asserts that education should empower children to take an active role in their learning; that good education is not a process of filling children’s empty brains with facts, but about inspiring them to be critical thinkers, with responsibility for their own learning. She invited children to take on roles, walk in the shoes of others, feel emotion and experience dilemmas; to question and interrogate, and to reflect on complex questions, such as who holds power, who is telling us the truth – and how we can know.

The quote from bell hooks chosen by Tiller – ‘What we cannot imagine, cannot come into being’ – reminds me of how many times, while facilitating drama in education, I witnessed children in role speaking truth to power. Through drama they imagined themselves standing up for truth and justice and, I like to imagine, this enabled it to come into being later in their lives.

People like Dr Theo Bryer and the Mantle of the Expert Network are keeping the debate about radical educators like Heathcote alive.

Theatre in Education

The wider Theatre in Education (TIE) movement was pioneered in the second half of the 20th century by companies such as Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Rochdale’s M6 Theatre Company, Big Brum in the Midlands and Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre (GYPT) – which I was lucky enough to join in the 1990s, realising my dream of working in TIE. Fundamental to TIE is the role of the Actor Teacher. In some TIE companies, Actor Teachers received teacher salaries from the local authority, which seems extraordinary now.

GYPT toured theatre to schools, with a simple set in the back of a van. Performances were devised by a team of Actor Teachers, a director, and a resident writer. It was a unique brand of participatory theatre, a hybrid of Heathcote’s drama in education methodology and Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre.

Actor Teachers ran training in drama and theatre in education methodology, as well as youth arts workshop programmes that helped young people build long-term relationships with the company. The pieces asked children big questions about the world and their place within it. Themes included racism, class, gender, domestic violence; it was unapologetically political. Children and young people weren’t just audiences of theatre; they were invited to become active participants, influencing the outcome of the drama. Sometimes they were framed in role, sometimes they were invited to replace the actors and face up to an oppressor.

When funding systems changed, TIE companies had to compete with children’s theatre for arts funding, and the value of TIE as an art form was harshly criticised. We felt misunderstood; we believed the innovation was in the pedagogy and how being in role inspired children – and teachers – to question society and where they fit in it.

Sadly, over a few decades the TIE movement was all but dismantled, quite likely because of the political nature of the work. At GYPT the Actor Teachers were made redundant in 2003. Some went on to establish their own companies, championing drama and theatre in education pedagogy. Adam Annand set up Speech Bubbles and Alison Hale set up Peoplescape Theatre, companies that still deliver innovative and transformative creative programmes in schools.

Youth Leadership

After leaving GYPT, I joined Ovalhouse (now Brixton House), where I led the Participation Department for 13 years. My role focused on children and young people facing social justice issues and structural barriers to arts participation, including a long-term project I set up with young refugees.

Alongside a team of passionate practitioners, I established a youth leadership programme, founded on ethical values. Young leaders devised their own ethically-focused manifesto, and I committed to holding myself accountable to them. They often chose the value of justice, and together we would interrogate how to apply it to our artistic practice, the making of theatre and the wider world.

During this time, we worked closely with Dr Tiller, who supported us as a critical friend and evaluator. We had many conversations about ethical values and power. The young leaders were often part of these conversations and their passion for social justice was palpable. These were young people who rarely saw role models in positions of power in the arts who looked or sounded like them.

Decades on, some of them now occupy leadership roles in arts and culture and do extraordinary work. One young leader established a refugee scholarship at his university; another set up a film company that foregrounds the narratives of Latinx Londoners; and a third is a director of an arts organisation that champions Queer arts.

Their progression is evidence that in some arts spaces the dominance of privilege has been disrupted. While I celebrate this, it isn’t enough: my hope is that people will find the tools and the courage to challenge the age-old systems that continue to benefit the powerful. To paraphrase activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis, we need to no longer accept the things we cannot change and find ways to change the things we cannot accept.

A collective response

As I reflect on my journey, one thing I have learnt is that, as well as tools and courage, we need coalitions of solidarity. As Tiller asserts:

Radical thought and the struggle for social transformation rarely occur in isolation. They almost always emerge through a collective response to systems and structures that marginalise, exclude and oppress.

At this perilous moment in our history, we need movement building. Maybe we can apply the principles of radical education to ourselves and come together with other like-minded people to imagine and strive for a different future, because as bell hooks says: ‘What we cannot imagine, cannot come into being’.

About the author

Stella Barnes and Dr Chrissie Tiller’s journeys through radical arts education have intersected in significant ways over several decades. Stella’s parents were friends with Dorothy Heathcote, the pioneer of Drama in Education, with whom Chrissie completed her postgraduate certificate in education at Newcastle University in 1970. Their paths then crossed again, if only indirectly, at Bretton Hall – a training college known for its creative approaches to arts in education and commitment to social justice – where Chrissie taught Drama in Education and Stella was a student. 

Later, while working as a director of a Theatre in Education company in London, Chrissie employed Actor Teachers who went on to work at Greenwich Young People’s Theatre, where Stella was a member of the team. They both worked closely with Jenny Harris, radical founder of The Albany in Deptford and Head of Education at the National Theatre, who became a friend and mentor to them. The work they did together while Stella was at Ovalhouse and Chrissie at Goldsmiths helped them recognise the fertile ground these intersections provided for sparking new thinking, especially around ethical values. Despite living in different parts of the country, these conversations still continue.  

Leading with Purpose: Cultural Education in Practice is a free resource for cultural educators that includes a collection of observations, studies, analysis and practical tools. It can be accessed and downloaded for free from A New Direction’s website here.