What does C&T stand for?
C&T could stand for Citizenship & Technology, Computers & Theatre, Creativity & Training or even Culture & Theory. But what does that mean?
Good question!
C&T was started 18 years ago as a Theatre In Education Company, under the name Collar and TIE. It quickly developed a reputation in Worcestershire and the West Midlands for high quality productions which toured the region’s schools.
The digital revolution of the mid-90s posed a challenge to C&T. Could the emerging new media technologies be embraced by the Company? Could the immediacy and currency that these new forms of communication had with young people be exploited in a positive way?
Our ideas were further distilled by American thinker Marc Prensky, who suggested that when people venture into the new digital landscape they divide into two categories: “digital immigrants” have learned the language of this land serviceably but imperfectly, always feeling foreign.
On the other hand, “digital natives” have grown up there, never knowing any different, and don’t think twice about their digital environment. Broadly, the natives are young people and the immigrants… aren’t!
Believing that young people are qualitatively different from older people, with different skills (for example, instinctively understanding the concept of virtuality), different ways of thinking (multi-tasking) and different ways of learning (playfully and interactively) has caused nothing less than a seismic change in C&T’s philosophy.
The dizzying pace of technological development and the endlessly creative ways technology is used and subverted means C&T has to ride the wave of change. Whilst blogging, podcasting and texting are already widespread, machinima, geocaching, wikis, moblogs and a plethora of other developments are gaining momentum.
So what does C&T stand for? We stand for a new way of unlocking the creative potential of young people. Rather than trying to make young people more like us (and consume our culture more), C&T wants to use the new norms of our technologically-driven society to give young people a distinctive voice; to better function in the emerging knowledge economy; to reinforce the ways in which they are culturally energised; and to help them become the artists of the future.
