NIECARE Webinar Series: Youth at Risk by Dr. Jennifer Wong (Lecturer, Visual & Performing Arts)
Date: 22 October 2020 (Thursday)
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm (UTC+8)
Speaker: Dr Jennifer Wong
Moderator: Crystal Goh
Venue: via Zoom
About Dr Jennifer Wong
Jennifer Wong is a Lecturer in the National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University (NIE-NTU), Singapore. She coordinates the Drama programme in the Visual and Performing Arts Academic Group in NIE-NTU and she teaches drama education, applied theatre and arts research courses in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Before joining NIE-NTU, she spent ten years in Singapore Polytechnic where she was one of the key members who designed and launched the Diploma in Applied Drama and Psychology. Jennifer enjoys working with children and youth to make theatre and she frequently partners social service organisations and schools to create participatory theatre programmes to complement youth development and support work. Her research interests include participatory arts, arts education and child and youth development.
About Crystal Goh
As an artist and educator, Crystal has experienced how the artistic process can be a potent way to express difficult emotions and explore alternative identities and futures. Extending this experience, she founded Diamonds on the Street, a social initiative that collaborates with youths through the songwriting process to turn their wounded histories into songs and stories of hope. Currently, Crystal is exploring how transformative types of arts pedagogies can be applied in an accessible way within academic settings.
About the presentation
This presentation discusses the findings from an interview research with 11 artists engaged by schools and/social service organisations to conduct arts programmes with ‘youth-at-risk’. The interviews delved deep into understanding the practices and pedagogies of the artists, and the expected roles of arts education in the social-emotional development of ‘youth-at-risk’. The arts programmes covered in this study range from music, drama to visual arts and they are typically conducted over a period of 4 to 10 weeks. Key themes that have emerged from the interviews, including the shifting identities of the young people, the strategies used by artists to engage the youth and, the desired professional development support for the artists, will be discussed.
