Heathcote: The Fight For Drama - The Fight For Education

In October 1989 a remarkable Drama conference took place. With close to four hundred participants , it was, almost certainly, the largest conference concerned with Drama and Theatre in Education ever to take place in the UK. It brought together teachers of Drama and Theatre in Education practitioners in a way no previous conference had. It also had the additional dimension of two dozen overseas representatives from a dozen countries in four continents, there to participate in the conference itself and in the talks which followed on immediately afterwards to begin the process of establishing an international association for drama in education. It was a hugely significant moment both in terms of organising to resist the political attacks on Drama and Education and in establishing the International Drama and Education Association which was to become IDEA. Follow the link above to watch Dorothy Heathcote’s astonishingly eclectic and encyclopaedic tour de force.