Interdisciplinary Performative Arts

The Cluster for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (CIPA) serves as a research and knowledge-exchange hub dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary performance and practice-led research. By bringing together scholars, practitioners, postgraduate researchers, and external partners, CIPA investigates how performance practices across theatre, dance, music, digital media, visual arts, and installation can generate new knowledge, foster creative innovation, and contribute to contemporary cultural, pedagogical, and artistic debates. CIPA promotes staff and PhD students research through research-led teaching, collaborative partnerships, and public-facing artistic projects. In addition, the cluster promotes an integrated model of creative practice, critical inquiry, and professional engagement at regional, national, and international levels.

CIPA is home of Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies (IPP) a working group of International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR). With international members from a range of disciplines and international perspectives, the IPP working group is concerned with the varied intersections between theatre/performance, pedagogy(ies) and society(ies). See the web link :

https://iftr.org/interdisciplinary-performative-pedagogies/

At a broader level, CIPA appears to position Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as a centre for contemporary artistic research where performance is understood as a means of exploring complex cultural, social, pedagogical, and aesthetic questions. The cluster's work likely contributes to debates around:

cluster's work likely contributes to debates around:

The value of artistic research.
New methodologies in practice research.
Innovative performer training.
Digital and hybrid performance.
Intercultural performance practices.
Public engagement through the arts.

The cluster embraces a broad conception of performance, bringing together researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines including:

Theatre Histories
Acting
Theatre directing and devising
Political and Applied performance
Dance and movement-based practices
Musical theatre
Sound design and sonic arts
Performance Pedagogy
Interdisciplinary Digital and immersive arts
Site-specific and installation practice

Site-specific and installation practice

Staff

Professor Aleksandar Dundjerovic (Director of CIPA): digital media performance and performing arts, co-creation and collaborative practices
Dr Polly Hudson (Associate Director of CIPA): process and creative practices in dance, ecosomatics
Dr Paola Botham: political theatre and applied performance
Professor Stephen Simms: interdisciplinary acting pedagogies
Dr. Gareth Sommers, performance techniques and training
Alex Teylor, associate professor , vocal expressivity and training
Professor Lamberto Coccioli: digital music and architecture
Dr Michael Fletcher: music improvisation and co-creation
Professor Michael Wolters: applied performance and composition in music
Dr Soudabeh Ananisarab: theatre history, British theatre
Professor David Roberts: historiography of theatre performance, dramaturgy and interdisciplinarity