Fake It Till You Make It – Building your employability skills through theatre

Whilst Sweden and the UK remain under the European unemployment rates, disadvantaged social groups of all European countries still face barriers when trying to gain employment. For instance, migrants are more likely to be unemployed than the rest of thepopulation and migrant women (except in Sweden) are even more affected. Many social groups can be considered as disadvantaged on the labour market, they include women, older workers (aged 50+), people under 24 (especially those in care system), ethnic minorities, migrants, people with disabilities, living in remote and/or rural areas, from lower income background or long-term unemployed (12 months) for example.However, unemployment negative effects go beyond economic concerns and can drag those affected in a negative spiral affecting not only their economic situation but also their social integration and mental health. Could there be a way to break this vicious circle with the help of theatre activities and practical drama techniques with a special focus to promoting social inclusion and self-resilience increased by positive feedback?Fake It Till You Make IT” project aimed to develop soft skills for employability and social inclusion training methodology. This is based on the theatre and educational methodologies and latest research developed by Norrbottensteatern (SE) and l’Albero, associazione culturale (IT) and enhanced by Inova (UK), Materahub (IT) and Agencia Para El Empleo de Madrid (ES) who have expertise in the fields of employability, performing arts, entrepreneurship and diversity. We started by creating a common framework: Theatre and Employability Skills Assessment Framework, an initial study that gave the project a confirmation on the training needs to focus on. We continued to create the methodology together, and tested it on groups from the target group to verify its positive effects on the development of soft skills.We have now showed that theatre activity can boost numerous soft skills in all participating countries, including: 1. Social skills – impersonation, cooperative skills, teamwork, self-confidence and public performance, reading body language2. Entrepreneurial skills – problem-solving, project planning, engineering of a piece, initiative, drive, creativity 3. Analytical skills – contextual and societal analysis.4. Leadership skills – empathy, mobilising others, motivation5. Intercultural communication – the educational methods employed in drama are by nature inclusive and allowing everyone to take part regardless of individual disposition. The Fake It Till You Make It methodology was tested on more than 70 participants in pilot groups in four different countries. We could see a direct effect of increased skills for the participants, even leading to jobs! The methodology has attracted a lot of attention and even during the course of the project the methodology was already implemented with another intermediary organisation working with disadvantaged groups.If you want to learn about the methodology created, and how to use theatre activities to develop the soft skills of unemployed disadvantaged people, please read our Fake It Till You Make It Guidebook!