In the English language animation is mostly associated with the
work of film makers. Illustrators create action from a series of images
and we have the illusion of something living. In French and Italian
especially, it takes on a further meaning. It is linked to the
activities of community workers, arts workers and others, for example:
Using theatre and play as means of self-expression with community groups, children and people with special learning needs. (sometimes called creative-expressive animation).
Working with people and groups so that they participate in and manage the communities in which they live (sometimes called socio-cultural animation).
Developing opportunities for pre-school and school-children such as adventure playgrounds, toy libraries, outdoor activity centres, and organized sports activities (sometimes called leisure-time animation).
If we return to the word’s Greek origins then we are likely to be drawn to Aristotle and his distinction between that which is alive - and that which is inanimate. The thing that marks the former off from the latter is psuche (from which 'psychology' is derived) and this can be variously translated as soul, breathe or life. At one level, thus, we can talk of animation as 'making things move or happen' - much as animators do of cartoon pictures. In this way, in some of the literature concerned with community development, animators are discussed as 'motivators'. At another level there is something more - soul.
A fairly standard way of approaching animation in a European context is via 'community development'. The following definition is taken from a Report of the European Cultural Foundation in 1973.
Animation is that stimulus to the mental, physical, and emotional life of people in a given area which moves them to undertake a wider range of experiences through which they find a higher degree of self-realization, self expression, and awareness of belonging to a community which they can influence (quoted by Simpson 1989: 54).
Some animators (animateurs) are less keen on an emphasis on stimulation, motivation and inspiration as it can lead to doing things to people, rather than working with them (a concern shared with Buber and Freire. Animators in this sense, look to breathe life into situations rather than people. They help to build environments and relationships in which people can grow and have a care for each other. It is this latter strand that is closest to informal education.
This idea runs quite closely to the concerns of experiential educators. Indeed, a recent book by David Boud and Nod Miller (1997) is entitled Working with experience. Animating learning. They use the word because of its connotations: to give life to, to quicken, to vivify, to inspire. They see the functions of animators to be that of ‘acting with learners, or with others, in situations where learning is an aspect of what is occurring, to assist them to work with their experience’ (1997: 7).
In more self -consciously 'radical' terms, (and with a nod to Freire), animation is described by one Italian commentator as:
a form of social practice oriented towards the conscientisation [presa di conscienza] and the development of the repressed, deprived or latent potential of individuals, small groups and communities. (Contessa quoted in Maurizio 1991)
This orientation has been influential in some of the approaches developed within popular education traditions in south American countries such as Nicaragua. It is associated with the thinking and practice of educators such as Paulo Freire and the director Augusto Boal.
Part of the problem we have here is that animation, like community education, social pedagogy or informal education, can be used in a variety of ways. In what follows we explore the emergence of the idea and some of the practices and theorizations associated with different traditions of practice.
To make sense of animation we need to look at the ways that thinking around education and training have developed in Europe. Animation can be contrasted with education and formation (after Aristotle).
Thus, in some European discussions (e.g. in Italy) animation can be linked to socio-cultural work, and work with associations; formation with training - vocational and professional; and education with the activities of schools and colleges. However, this misses a fundamental usage and distinction; one that can be seen in phrases such as 'character-building' and 'character-forming'. Formation can be:
at once a mystical concern, steering the soul to its salvation, and a social programme as it aims at the transmission and the improvement of appropriate forms of social life. (Lorenz 1994: 88)
There are areas of considerable overlap in these notions, for example the way that they each could be seen to have a concern with 'soul' or being. However, they do bring out different dimensions. There are times when we seek to open up possibilities and look to encouraging people to become involved in some activity, experience or campaign. At other times we will seeking to create an environment in which people can develop specific skills (and hopefully, also to link them to some wider purpose and meaning). There will also be times when we encourage people to reflect on their feelings, experiences and ideas. In some respects animation, formation and education connect with another familiar threesome: knowledge (education), attitudes (animation) and skills (formation). I say 'connect' here - but I am not sure that I want to push this too far.
Part of the confusion comes from the way the words are used in practice. Each (after Freire and others) could be said to have an active and a passive side. The passive side is the provision of services in all three. This is often associated with treating people like objects. We breathe life into them, we try to shape them. We act on them.
An 'active' orientation views people as subjects, as active agents. In this orientation workers are concerned with the environment and interaction. They look to people as participants. They join with them in their struggles to make sense of themselves and the world - and to act.
Animation came to particular prominence within French adult educational thought during the late 1950s. 'Adult educators' began to be replaced by animateurs.
The animation fever of the 1960s received a surprising degree of acceptance. This desire to communicate and to create relationships manifested itself in the form of the group as an ideal which marked a separation from the popular education of yesteryear. The educator had been in a sort of dual relationship between the teacher and the taught. The animator, on the other hand, is in an intimate relationship with the group or gathering. (Poujol 1981 quoted in Toynbee 1985: 11)
This development was strengthened by the rise in local and movement-based initiatives following the social upheavals of 1968. Just as in the UK at the same time, a growing band of community workers were able to draw on the colonial experiences of attempting to foster development, so it was in France.
The new animateurs could also draw on the efforts of workers with youth groups. As Cannan et al (1992: 72-73) suggest, animateurs have established themselves as a fairly distinctive professional grouping. In the early 1990s there were around 13000 animateur in France under the joint supervision of the Ministry of Social Affairs and National Solidarity, and the Ministry of Free Time, Youth and Sport. Since the Second World War this group has been mainly concerned with young people's leisure activities (e.g. in maisons de jeunes et de la culture - youth and culture centres). More recently they have also been an expansion with regard to centres sociaux (social centres) and maisons de quartier (community centres) (Cannan et al 1992: 72-73).
However, today, there is some evidence that they have taken the 'pragmatic road of providing services to particular interests and interest groups often on a commercial basis' (Lorenz 1994: 99). There has also been a significant development in the integration of social policy around the prevention of exclusion and the the promotion of integration (insertion) (discussed by Cannan 1997). Animation has become an element within this strategy - and there has been a particular emphasis on the group.
Social action in contemporary France... is concerned above all with social integration and with working collectively with groups of local people, children, youth and adults, to promote that integration. It valorises and encourages group activities - holidays, outings, eating together - which centre on participation in the public sphere. It seeks to develop the neighbourhood as the new locus of solidarity now that the workplace cannot be so. (Cannan 1997: 100)
Animation in the Italian context has been associated with the work of Roman Catholic teaching orders such as the Salesians. However, it could be said to have really come into life during the late 1960s. The early rhetoric (and some practice) reflected radical preoccupations - but like their French colleagues, practitioners have bowed to the market. This can be seen in the strands of practice current in Italian animation.
Exhibit 1: Four strands in Italian animation
Lorenz (1994: 101) details four key strands within Italian animation (although these can also be seen, to some extent, within French approaches):
Creative-expressive animation. These use theatre and play as means of self-expression with community groups, children and people with special learning needs.
Socio-cultural animation. This has links to with the adult and community education movement and relates to communities and aims at 'promoting the development of abilities of people and groups to participate in and to manage the social and political reality in which they live. It is education as liberation which makes use of community action as well as of psycho-social methods to advance the expressive capacities of people' (Pollo 1991: 12)
Cultural animation. This is more an 'educational-didactive' approach applicable to schools and after-school activities. It views education mainly as socialization.
Leisure-time animation. This area is differentiated between initiatives relating to pre-school and school-children such as adventure playgrounds, toy libraries, outdoor activity centres, play in hospitals and in treatment centres, and organized sports activities, in which the commercial sector is also strongly present in the form of outdoor pursuit centres and activity holidays.
There are, again. obvious linkages into UK practice here - but what is interesting (and as was the case with social pedagogy) is the extent to which the notion of animation allows practitioners to operate across very different organizational contexts. The contrast is all the stronger here because of the way in which they are engaged in commercial activities.
It is important to turn to the developments in socio-cultural animation and popular education practice in South America. The community arts movement in the UK (akin to creative-expressive animation in Italy and France) has made similar reference to, say, Nicuraguan arts and cultural practice. Another key discourse is that which has grown up around the Theatre of the Oppressed or Forum Theatre. Here the key figure is that of the Brazilian theatre director and writer, Augusto Boal.
In Boal's work around forum theatre, invisible theatre and the theatre of the oppressed we see some fascinating expressions of socio-cultural animation. He writes of theatre as the art of looking at ourselves:
The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!). They are Spect-Actors.... Everything that actors do, we do throughout our lives, always and everywhere. Actors talk, move, dress to suit the setting, express ideas, reveal passions - just as we do in our everyday lives. The only difference is that actors are conscious that they are using the language of theatre, and are thus better able to turn it to their advantage, whereas the woman and man in the street do not know that they are speaking theatre. (Boal 1992: xxx).
In these words we can see some immediate connections to what we do as informal and community educators.
What Boal has done is to work in workshops - perhaps with workers from a particular factory (Forum Theatre) or to take performance to the street (Invisible Theatre) where people are confronted with what at first sight appear to be events - but are revealed as theatre. He begins by seeking to integrate the group and to explore political and economic questions (2 days). In this there is an emphasis on exercise - 'actors must work on their bodies to get to know them better and to make them more expressive' (ibid.: 1). The group would then work for a couple of days on preparing 'scenes' (through exercises, games etc.). On the fifth day they may take the scenes to the street (Invisible Theatre) and then on sixth make a presentation to an audience (Forum Theatre).
What we can see in this is a fairly straightforward process that carries within in many of the concerns and a significant amount of the analysis that runs through Freire's work. For example on dialogue: 'I believe it is more important to achieve a good debate than a good solution' (ibid. 230). However, two of the fascinating elements of this approach concern the animating force of performance; and the focus on emotion. In the case of the former, engaging in performance can bring forward questions, experiences and issues that are difficult to express in initially in words. It can reveal elements for the group to work on.
Second, Boal has picked up on the concerns of Stanislavski and the need to move beyond the mechanisation of the actor's body into allowing emotion to shape the final form of the actor's interpretation of a role. However, he is also at some concerns to explore that emotion. 'The important thing about emotion is what it signifies. We cannot talk about emotion without reason or, conversely, about reason without emotion; the former is chaos, the latter pure abstraction'. (ibid.: 48).
I have focused here on Boal so that we can get a little of the flavour of socio-cultural animation. The links with Freire are there - we have a Theatre of the Oppressed as against a Pedagogy. But what we have been talking about here is essentially a short-run exercise. The associationalism we began with, is much more long term - and may involve this form of intervention - but it also entails an active appreciation of ourselves as animateurs, educators and agents of formation.
Aluffi-Pentini, A. and Lorenz, W. (eds.) Anti-Racist Work with Young People. European experiences and approaches, Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing. 208 + x pages. Collection of material which explores racism and the nation state; oppositional and relational identities; pedagogical principles and approaches plus case material from Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Particularly welcome as the editors contribute substantial chapters concerning pedagogy.
Berrigan, F. (1974) 'Animation' Projects in the UK. Aspects of socio-cultural community development, Leicester: National Youth Bureau. 84 pages. Examines the work of different projects and agencies within education, sport, the arts, communications media and community work. Each section has an introductory discussion and there is an openning, short, exploration of animation. Animation is defined as 'a process in which individuals, small groups or larger communities are activated or animated to create for themselves and their neighbours improved social, physical, cultural or emotional settings'.
Boal,
A. (1988) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto. 216 pages.
Boal shows theatre to be a weapon, not only of bourgeois control but of
revolution. He examines the ways in which theatre has come to reflect
ruling-class control and how the process can be reversed in
Brechtian/Marxist poetics. He does this while looking to his experience
of revolutionary theatre in Latin America, and gives examples of
exercises and games used in the People's Theatre of Peru. He points to
the revolutionary potential of transforming the spectator into the
actor.
Cannan, C., Berry, L. and Lyons, K. (1992) Social Work and Europe, London: Macmillan. 181 + xii pages. Includes some discussion of social pedagogy, animation etc. Has chapters on social Europe; social policies and social trends in Europe; social workers, organizations and the state; branches and themes of social work (concentrates on Germany and France); French social work; participation; and social action.
Cannan, C. and Warren, C. (eds.) (1997) Social Action with Children and Families. A community development approach to child and family welfare, London: Routledge. 225 + xiv pages. This book looks beyond the usual narrow confines of British social work texts - looking at more community oriented forms of engagement (especially family centres) and drawing on traditions of practice from the UK, Germany and France. There is some recognition of the potential of more educative approaches and a concern with local networks and institutions.
Lorenz, W. (1994) Social Work in a Changing Europe, London: Routledge. 206 + xii pages. Excellent discussion of social work in Europe this century - especially strong on animation and social pedagogy. Chapters on social work within different welfare regimes; ideological positions; social work Fascism and democratic reconstruction; social work and social movements; social work , multiculturalism and anti-racist practice; and emerging issues.
Sunker, H. and Otto, H-U. (eds.) (1997) Education and Fascism. Political identity and social education in Nazi Germany, London: Taylor and Francis. 180 + viii pages. Excellent collection of papers that explore the use of social pedagogy (pedagogy oriented toward 'folk community') to develop an ideology sympathetic to the social framework and programmes of the Nazis. Chapters explore the context; identity formation and social practice; work camps; correctional education; emancipation or social incorporation - the experience of girls and young women; why social workers adopted the new order; social work as social education; the quest for democratic education.
Toynbee, W. S. (1985) Adult Education and the Voluntary Associations in France, Nottingham: University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education. 44 + vi pages. Brief but very helpful discussion of adult education associations with material on animation, education populaire and la vie associative.
Boal, A. (1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge.
Cannan, C., Berry, L. and Lyons, K. (1992) Social Work and Europe, London: Macmillan.
Cannan, C. (1997) 'Social development with children and families in France' in C. Cannan and C. Warren (eds.) Social Action with Children and Families. A community development approach to child and family welfare, London: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gadotti, M. (1996) Pedagogy of Praxis. A dialectical philosophy of education, New York: SUNY Press.
Hamilton, E. and Cunningham, P. M. (1989) 'Community-based adult education' in S. B. Merriam and P. M. Cunningham (eds.) Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Pollo, M. (1991) Educazione come animazione, Turin: Libreria Dottrina Cristiana.
Thompson, J (2002) Bread and Roses. Arts, culture and lifelong learning, Leicester: NIACE.
Toynbee, W. S. (1985) Adult Education and the Voluntary Associations in France, Nottingham: University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education.
Walters, S. and Manicom, L. (eds.) (1996) Gender in Popular Education, London: Zed Books.
© Mark K. Smith 1999
