The Great Game of Power: Critical Pedagogy in Conflicted Times

This paper is informed by a systematisation of Active Inquiry’s Spect-Act project, which engaged three community organisations in Edinburgh with Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. A systematic process of reflection and action illuminated a variety of tensions in the work, funded by Creative Scotland and apparently in tune with Government rhetoric relating to socially engaged art, community empowerment and service user involvement. We explore the tensions and consider the challenges of this form of critical pedagogy in a political context very different from the one which stimulated the practice of Freire and Boal.