CALL To Action | UCLA Apr 14-15, 2023

Reimagining Justice: Exploring the Theater of Change Methodology

Saturday, April 15, session 2

1:30 - 3:00 PM PST

The Theater of Change is a groundbreaking methodology developed as a collaboration between the Broadway Advocacy Coalition and the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School.

The process brings together performance-based artists, law and policy students and experts, and directly impacted community advocates to deepen connections and build each other’s capacity to use narrative strategy combined with direct experience to catalyze policy and systems change. Participants ultimately collaborate as equal partners to create arts-based performance pieces that have an engagement strategy to target specific areas and policies. The methodology hinges on centering directly impacted individuals, their communities, and their lived experiences in policy discourse and decision- making, leading to empathy-driven policies. Participants will be sorted into groups that include representatives from each constituency or expertise and facilitators will lead participants through activities to practice deep listening, identify points of entry into a story, map the policy landscape, identify potential levers for change, and begin the process of crafting an artistic project to impact the selected audience.