Legislative theatre: A creative civic practice to engage citizens and policy makers in social change

Katy Rubin is a Legislative Theatre practitioner and strategist based in the UK, and founder of The People Act hub for creative civic practice. She works in partnership with local and national governments and community groups to co-create equitable and innovative public policy. She currently collaborates with cities around Europe to design policy initiatives on multiple issues such as housing and health care.

Katy is also a Senior Fellow with People Powered: Global Hub for Participatory Democracy; a Senior Atlantic Fellow at the LSE; and former executive director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. Her Legislative Theatre work with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was awarded the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy’s 2022 award for Best Practice in Citizen Participation. 

 In this episode, Katy explained the origins (from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed) and practices of legislative theatre that she describes as a participatory democracy process that’s joyful, inclusive, and accessible. She highlighted the value and importance of being serious about fun as fun allows people to collaborate and stay engaged over time.

Katy stressed the importance to think beyond ideation, and make sure that things are in place for policies to be implemented. For her, it is key to success of legislative theatre as a community-based policy-making. Last, we talked about how it was essential to acknowledge power dynamics and create the conditions for (counter-) balancing them if we want to develop truly participatory approaches.

To learn more about Katy's work, follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katyrubin/

and check her website: https://www.katyrubin.com/

and the People Act website: http://www.thepeopleact.org/

Credits:

Conception, host and production: Anne-Laure Fayard

Sound design & Post-production: Valter Gouveia

Music & Art Work: Guilhem Tamisier