As a society we are confronted with a polycrisis: where multiple, interconnected crises ranging from climate breakdown to geopolitical instability are converging and amplifying each other. These are complex systemic challenges with a long history that call for a paradigm shift in ways of seeing, knowing and doing.

So: How can performance contribute to transformation at the personal, societal and systemic level - away from extraction and depletion, towards more just, regenerative and caring futures?

This is a key question for the Lectorate of the Academy of Theatre and Dance which we address through values-led, transdisciplinary practice research in the performing arts, conducted in collaboration with colleagues in education and a range of external partners.

We aim to open up ideas of what research is and make it accessible to a diverse range of approaches and ways of knowing by using a broad definition of research as “a process of investigation leading to new insights effectively shared with others”.

We particularly focus on research conducted in and through performance practices - from choreography, theatre-making and costume design to dance in education and community-based practices.

We focus on 3 themes: social justice and access, climate and regeneration, and care, wellbeing, grief and loss. These themes also reflect our 3 core values of justice, regeneration, care.

Our mission is to amplify under-represented perspectives including global Majority, Indigenous and children’s perspectives and under-researched areas of the working field such as Creative Producing, Mime, Drag, and Disability performance.

Our work is rooted in its local context of Amsterdam but deeply values a global, transcultural outlook that decentres Eurocentric paradigms and examines social themes from an intersectional perspective.

We are motivated by the shared desire to contribute to addressing current injustices and by the belief in the potential of artistic and creative practices to shape personal and societal transformation: how engagement in performance practices can heal, ignite imagination, create alternative worlds, shift mindsets and behaviours, raise awareness, provoke questions and develop new insights, build community and shape solidarity.