Goldsmiths is a diverse institution with a clear international ethos. Our strategic plan includes a commitment to strengthen international relationships and profile and an ambition to build a global community on campus and support students to be global citizens equipped with the necessary skills and expertise to succeed internationally. The activity delivered as part of this KA107 project helped us to continue to make progress against key objectives in this strategic plan including:1) Embedding study and work abroad across Goldsmiths supporting students from any department to access international experience in particular Education and Psychology where there are limited opportunities for mobility.2) Doubling the students studying and working abroad by 2023 – the Tomsk State University (TSU) traineeships helped us towards a 90% increase in students going abroad3) Increasing students from a widening participation (WP) gaining an international experience – 17/25 outgoing students met one of our WP criteria.4) Skills development for our students – clear evidence of this reported by studentsThe activity also supported our pledge to be part of the UK’s Go international: Stand Out campaign to increase the number of students at UK institutions studying or working abroad.Our 2018 KA107 project has been mixed. We strengthened existing partnerships with Fujian Normal University (FNU) and TSU exchanging good numbers of participants but the impact of Covid-19 disrupted almost all of our planned activity with the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).73 students and staff took part with 29 students and 9 staff coming to Goldsmiths and 25 students and 10 staff going abroad. Although we did not meet our planned numbers due to the impact of Covid-19, we are delighted with the numbers achieved in particular the total placements with TSU. In general feedback from participants is positive. 90% of students and 80% of staff who participated were very or rather satisfied with their experience. 100% of those coming to Goldsmiths were satisfied which is particularly impressive given the impact of the strikes and Covid-19. The majority of feedback on programme delivery and support is also positive. Satisfaction levels of students and staff are high in areas such as academic support received and guidance on accommodation, visas and insurance. There were some concerns around equal treatment of outgoing students and quality of accommodation. We have taken these on board and implemented improvements for future years. Feedback on our partner institutions is mainly positive too. In general this demonstrates that we and our partners are providing impactful experiences which is testament to all the hard work undertaken by staff across different teams in the universities involved.There are some areas of negative feedback which we need to work hard to resolve in the future. Some students reported issues with programme planning and delivery. There were also reports of racial microaggressions and one student not feeling comfortable disclosing their sexuality. Two staff members had a negative experience. We have taken all these concerns seriously, have gathered feedback and reviewed the activity carefully and produced a set of recommendations which we are already implementing.These Erasmus placements enhanced student experience and learning in numerous ways. Outgoing students developed their skills and employability including independent learning, teamwork and intercultural appreciation. Incoming students also reported improvements in managing challenging situations. Over 85% of participants strongly agreed or rather agreed that their chances of getting a new or better job had increased after the experience which is fantastic. Staff also clearly benefited from the experience developing their skills and in particular developing new learning practices or teaching methods and reinforcing and extending their professional networks. Institutionally, staff exchanges enriched important teaching and collaboration in areas such as Early Years Education, English as a Lingua Franca and a range of topics in Psychology e.g. the legal implications of genetic research and linguistics. Participants have worked hard to disseminate information about their experiences through internal staff and student meetings, external events and via local and national networks.Erasmus continues to benefit Goldsmiths and our partners at an institutional level. We have all strengthened our partnerships and collaboration, reinforced ongoing academic work and research, developed expertise in student and staff mobility and increased opportunities for mobility as well as internationalising our campuses. We have also learnt a lot in particular in relation to project management and participant support. Lessons learnt have already been implemented in our ongoing Erasmus projects. We hope to be able to transition these partnerships into new relationships post Erasmus.

Three students took part in traineeships with a total duration of 13 months; 17 took part in study mobility with a total duration of 64 months, of which 12 were from a disadvantaged background; 5 staff took part in teaching mobility, totaling 31 days; 21 staff undertook staff training mobility totaling 183 days.Results of the projectStudent traineeships: the purpose of this activity was to give our students the chance to gain valuable work experience in an international setting, a better understanding of different work cultures, and to gain exposure to different approaches to team-working and leadership, in addition to gaining sector-specific skills and work-based language learning. The project was successful in meeting overarching objectives and students reported varied benefits in terms of self-development, intercultural skills and employability skills which will directly benefit them in future study and employment. Study mobility: the purpose of the study mobility activity was to allow our students to gain language skills and exposure to other cultures, both in a living and learning context as well as exposure to alternative approaches to their academic discipline. This would support personal development and greater engagement with their ongoing studies. Our students clearly benefited from their mobilities in terms of inter-cultural awareness, broader self-development, and increased responsibility and initiative for their own learning journey. They also reported a feeling of being better connected to the European agenda.Staff mobility: the purpose of staff mobility was to enable staff members across all areas of the university, both professional services and academic sections, to have the opportunity to participate in and learn from the culture and working practice of a European university. It was hoped that this would generate a cross-fertilisation of ideas and sharing of best practice within their own specialism and beyond. Due to differences in funding for higher education, there is potential for UK higher education to become rather inward-facing and the Erasmus+ programme enables academics, practitioners and professional service staff to reengage with the purpose and value of higher education and to reflect on their own organisation and professional practices whilst developing skills relevant to their area.Long term benefits gained?Upgraded skills and increased engagement of staff and students in their work and studies?Established individual and professional contacts and networks with European institutions ?Created the basis for future research and teaching links?Created important precedents for student mobility which we can continue to build on in forthcoming years.

This project aims to bring together motion capture technology with established movement practices which cultivate attention on bodily awareness, and in particular Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT), to explore how sensorial awareness can be captured and what visualisations might emerge. SRT is a pioneering approach to dance which has evolved from the simple principle that when we are letting go of habitual holding patterns we can move more freely, articulately and powerfully. Joan Skinner, the American choreographer, dance improvisation pioneer and former dancer with the Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham companies, created the technique from early experiments in the 1960s. SRT utilizes image-guided floorwork to ease tension and promote an effortless kind of moving, integrated with alignment of the whole self. Tactile exercises (partner 'graphics') are used to give the imagery immediate kinaesthetic effect: spontaneous movement is evoked by imagery and guided movement studies. Motion capture is a generic name for the techniques which obtain motion data from human performers for a wide range of applications including biomechanics, sports science, ergonomics, advertising, TV and 3D computer games. Regarded as a significant component of the film and games industries, motion capture is also incorporated into arts events but it demands a level of expertise to use it effectively that is not readily achieved by artists.\n\nThe project will explore how the methods and principles which characterise the practice of SRT and related practices can 'translate' to the production of visualisations for virtual environments, to shed light on contemporary ideas of interface design and display methods, and to understand more about SRT as a movement discipline. The aim is to enhance the interaction experience for audiences to produce new art experiences which are intellectually and socially engaging and can, through a re-engagement with the complexity of the moving body, generate new understandings about our relationship with our own body within the world. The project is therefore unique in that it will map a specific dance practice, embed this mapping within a game engine and test a variety of avatar visualisations in real time allowing audiences to interact and be directly involved in the process. Finally this interaction will be augmented by using these findings to immerse the player/performer into the action to create new performance spaces and experiences.\n

This unique European theatre project uses technology innovatively and imaginatively to create new theatre in a specially designed CyberStudio that offers myriad possibilities for live on-line,reflective and archival research by geographically dispersed collaborators. Our chosen use of this new tool we have created, confronts the enduringly thorny subject of gender relationships in today's globalised culture by plunging into the intimacy of cyber space to make live performance. We thus work from the potential the Web offers for private lives to become public, for exhibitionism, confessional correspondence and masquerade. We explore how we behave here, role-playing anonymously and writing collectively, and adapt this into a uniquely energetic and lively theatre text. \n\nAs a co-production this innovative work brings two very different organisations that share theatrical aims and creative strategies into close and pioneering collaboration. Both Director and partner organisation Mladinsko Theatre (Ljubljana), share a commitment to theatrical research, each inspired by the example of Peter Brook. Mladinsko's ensemble of actors, still working today from a Communist cultural employment model with annual salaries, long rehearsals and tenured contracts, contribute intellectually and artistically to the creation of new works and conduct intensive literary and practical research over many months on each new project. Whilst less funded in the UK, creating work over much shorter periods, the Director also encourages the performer to be an active intellectual and artistic collaborator in theatrical creation. \n\nIn the Don Juan Project habits are being stretched in new directions. Technology here offers an exceptionally long artistic research and development period leading to a physical/devising methodology in rehearsals towards final production. The inventive and original approach to the development of a dramaturgy / using cyberspace as a research studio / is an experiment in how to harness technology to artistic synergy. \n\nThe co-production involves a core company of five Mladinsko/three UK researcher-performers, and a Dramaturg. Prior to live research in rehearsals, they will have met and played in the CyberStudio in directed research, improvisation and role play for one year on a weekly basis. They use live writing and visual and written source material to interrogate the icon of Don Juan as manifest in classical and modern drama, poetry, opera, film, the Web and their imaginations as a springboard.\n\nTogether with Mladinsko dramaturg, Zeljko Hrs, Furse will create a draft performance text devised from this virtual exchange. The company will assemble live for a ten week rehearsal process in two blocks of time during which this text will be further researched in embodied practices - training, improvisation and devising - and reconstructed into its final performative text. The result should prove to be an electric, visceral and trenchant physical theatre production in which all will have invested a great deal of themselves and which should appeal to a wide audience as well as to scholars and researchers in contemporary European theatre and performance, media studies, and gender studies in particular.\n\nThe production will premiere for performances at Goldsmiths Theatre, London and Mladinsko in September 2007. It will tour abroad and to venues in the UK, offering workshops, talks and residencies to University Theatre/performance departments in 2008. \n\nImmediately our research has come to fruition, the software for the CyberStudio will be released into the public domain on line together with a Manual and a Creative Commons license, so that as a template it can continue to serve and be adapted by practioners and researchers, encouraging potentially globally dispersed collaboration. \n\nA conference on international co-production models is planned for 2008 to coincide with UK touring.

People with learning disabilities (hereafter PWLD) are a marginalised group in the UK. This PhD will focus on social relations within learning disability networks, which has been identified as an area in particular need of further study (Power, Hall et al. 2021). My thesis will engage with the exclusion/inclusion experienced by PWLD, by foregrounding their active roles in co-creating their communities. Government policy on the inclusion of PWLD has been criticised as an attempt to 'normalise' people, through expectations based on hard outcomes, such as employability and independent living (Cameron 2005; Hall 2010; Cushing 2015). Despite inclusion policies, many PWLD live in a 'parallel world', in proximity to but not sharing the communities of non-disabled people (Desjardins 2000). In the UK, there are a range of learning disability communities created by: training and day centres, shared living, self-advocacy groups, friendship and support groups. In local areas, members move between these communities. My research will fulfil the imperative for expansive, particular and responsive conceptions of inclusion. Pamela Cushing argues there is need for policy and research that is more 'respectful of [PWLD's] diverse needs and preferences' (2015: 83). As such, the research will provide an original contribution to the field through exploration of how PWLD themselves enact, experience and conceive 'meaningful inclusion' (Oliver and Barnes 2010). In the study members will be viewed as community practitioners - and their networks as a product of their practices and associated values. I will trace formal and informal learning disability networks in the UK. There will be a qualitative, multimethod approach, involving ethnography, workshops and interviews. The research will be designed to respond to the communication needs of people with minor through to profound learning disabilities. Close attention will be paid to ways in which PWLD traverse and co-create their communities. The thesis will primarily consider to what extent and how these learning disability networks are produced by their community members' particular yet intersecting modes of participation and belonging. A speculative element of the project will invite PWLD to wonder what their communities could become and how broader society could adopt aspects of their practice. The thesis will contribute to the field of learning disability social research, with the potential of influencing learning disability communities, social sector practice and government policy. In particular, it will contribute to: a) understanding learning disability networks; b) the centring of PWLD as community practitioners; c) understanding how PWLD enact, experience and conceive 'meaningful inclusion' and d) conducting participatory research with people with minor through to profound learning disabilities.