Alison Jeffers is a full-time lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester where she started teaching in 2009 after gaining a PhD there in 2008. Alison’s research interests include theatre and migration, performances of citizenship, questions of culture and democracy and performances of the everyday. She teaches storytelling, devising and adaptation.
Alison studied Drama and English at the University of Manchester before working in community arts throughout the 1980s. She worked with Dave Chadwick and Gerri Moriarty to set up Cartwheel Community Arts in Rochdale before moving into work in youth and community theatre. She taught for many years at the Arden School of Theatre in Manchester before starting her PhD. A full list of publications, teaching and research interest can be found on the university website at
Alison
Gerri Moriarty studied English and Drama at Birmingham University in the early Seventies. Her Head of Department there was Graham Woodruff, who was in the process of founding Telford Community Arts with Kathy McKerras. Gerri’s first full-time job was at the Beaford Centre Community Project in North Devon; she then helped to set up High Peak Community Arts in Derbyshire.
For most of her life, she has worked as a free-lance artist and arts consultant. As a community theatre director, she directed large-scale and small-scale performances in Manchester and Belfast. She trained actors and dancers in Eritrea and Ethiopia in community theatre skills and practices and in the UK, she trained creative practitioners from many disciplines interested in working in community, educational and group contexts. As an arts consultant she has specialised in evaluation as a means of developing and strengthening policy and practice.
Details of Gerri’s current work can be found on her website www.gerrimoriarty.com
Gerri
community arts unwrapped 