Dr Sylvan Baker

MA, PGCert, PhD, FRSA
Job title
Senior Lecturer Community Performance Applied Theatre

Profile

I am a neuro diverse care leaver, practitioner and researcher who has been working across the fields of applied theatre, socially engaged arts and education for the past 30 years. My practice has taken place across the UK and globally in sites in Brazil, and the USA, in a diverse range of contexts and communities and has a specific interest in international interventions in site of conflict and transitional justice. More recently my work has centred around developing research that allows its participants to be co researchers and not objects of research.

Before coming to The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, I was Artistic Director of Youth Action’s Rainbow Factory, the largest cross community Arts project in N. Ireland. From 2000-2006, I was Associate Director of London Bubble Theatre company working on participatory projects with children, young people and adults I pioneered Bubble’s intergenerational promenade theatre performances.

 I completed my MA in Drama, Applied Theatre at Central in 2007.

In 2005, I began working with the arts and social justice research centre, People’s Palace Projects, (PPP) where I coordinated the UK partnerships projects between Brazilian Social Project AfroReggae and arts organisations from across the UK including the Barbican; Southbank Centre; Theatre Royal Stratford East; Contact, Manchester; The Lawnmowers and The Sage, Gateshead. This work explored the knowledge transfer of artistic practice between AfroReggae, who are based in the improvised favela communities of Rio de Janeiro and artists in the UK. I became Associate Director of PPP in 2010 and completed my Practice PhD on my work with AfroReggae in 2014.

I am currently an Associate Artist for the Clod Ensemble’s Performing Medicine.

Performing Medicine is a programme of courses, workshops, and events, which use the arts to provide training to medical students and practising health professionals in the NHS. One of our current Performing Medicine collaborations is with Guys & St Thomas’ Simulated and Interactive Learning Centre (SaIL) to develop embodied interventions for staff with the NHS and contributed to the publication of the Circle of Care by Clod and the SaIL Centre.

I became a FRSA and Education & Creative Learning Associate at the RSA in 2015.

Before Central, I taught BA and MA students at Queen Mary University of London, where I am an Artistic Fellow, and MA students at Goldsmith College and Queen’s University Belfast.

Areas of Expertise

  • Applied and socially engaged theatre
  • Race and Ethnicity in performance
  • Arts & Health, Medical Humanities, public health
  • Practice-Based research
  • Applied Theatre in sites of Conflict
  • Verbatim and Documentary Performance
  • Drama Facilitation
  • Theatre & International Development
  • Verbatim Performance
  • Inclusion, Diversity and Social Exclusion

PhD Supervision

I am currently supervising or interested in supervising doctoral projects in the areas of Applied Theatre and Health, & Race and Identity,

Key Publications

2020. Baker, Sylvan and Inchley, Maggie. Verbatim Practice as Research with Care-Experienced Young People: An ‘Aesthetics of Care’ Through Aural Attention. In: Performing Care: New perspectives on Socially Engaged Performance. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9781526146816

2019. Baker, Sylvan, Inchley, Maggie, Dar, Sadhvi and Pujara, Susmita. The Verbatim Formula: Caring for Care Leavers in the Neoliberal University. Research in Drama Education, 24 (3). pp. 413-419. ISSN 1356-9783

External Practice

2021. BBC Radio1 and BBC Sounds, The Small Axe Podcast- ‘Person in Care’

2020. ‘More than just a file!’ - bespoke workshop on care for the Department of Education

2020. ‘Sound Travels Faster in Water’ in collaboration with Our Hearings Our Voice, Scotland.’ Promenade Performance exhibition for MSPs at the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh

2019. ‘Sharing Testimonies of Care’, The Office for Students

2017. Expert witness, All Party Advisory Committee, Children and Young People, Palace of Westminster.

2015-2021. Co Director/Researcher, The Verbatim Formula, Participatory Verbatim Theatre project with young people with experience of care (see Ruth Hardy, ‘The Verbatim Formula,”’It’s Child’s Play”: The Performance that Lets Young People in Care Share Their Stories,’ Guardian, 21 January)

2010-2013. Director, Cultural Warriors, International Artistic Residency with AfroReggae, Brazil, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Contact, Manchester & Sage Gateshead.

Register of Interest

Advisor to Young Vic Taking Part project