Interdisciplinary Performative Arts
The Cluster for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (CIPA) is a dynamic research and knowledge exchange hub dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary performance, artistic innovation, and practice-led research. It provides a focus for researchers in RBC Acting, bringing together leading scholars, practitioners, postgraduate researchers, and external partners. CIPA explores how performance practices across theatre, dance, music, digital media, visual arts, and installation can generate new knowledge, inspire creative innovation, and shape contemporary cultural, pedagogical, and artistic discourse. Through collaborative research, public-facing artistic projects, and external partnerships, CIPA supports staff and doctoral research while enriching research-led teaching. It creates opportunities for creative practice, critical inquiry, societal improvement and professional engagement at regional, national, and international levels.
CIPA is home of Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies (IPP), a working group of International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR). With international members from a range of disciplines and international perspectives, the IPP working group is concerned with the varied intersections between theatre/performance, pedagogy(ies) and society(ies). Visit the IFTR webpage for more information.
At a broader level, CIPA position Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as a centre for contemporary artistic research where performance is understood as a means of exploring complex cultural, social, pedagogical, and aesthetic questions. The cluster's work contributes to debates around:
- The value of artistic research.
- New methodologies in practice research.
- Innovative performer training.
- Digital and hybrid performance.
- Intercultural performance practices.
- Public engagement through the arts.
The cluster embraces a broad conception of performance, bringing together researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines including:
- Theatre Histories
- Acting
- Theatre directing and devising
- Political and Applied performance
- Dance and movement-based practices
- Musical theatre
- Sound design and sonic arts
- Performance Pedagogy
- Interdisciplinary Digital and immersive arts
Staff
- Professor Aleksandar Dundjerovic (Director of CIPA): digital media performance and performing arts, co-creation and collaborative practices
- Dr Polly Hudson (Associate Director of CIPA): process and creative practices in dance, ecosomatics
- Dr Paola Botham: political theatre and applied performance
- Professor Stephen Simms: interdisciplinary acting pedagogies
- Dr. Gareth Sommers, performance techniques and training
- Alex Taylor, associate professor , vocal expressivity and training
- Professor Lamberto Coccioli: digital music and architecture
- Dr Michael Fletcher: music improvisation and co-creation
- Professor Michael Wolters: applied performance and composition in music
- Dr Soudabeh Ananisarab: theatre history, British theatre
- Professor David Roberts: historiography of theatre performance, dramaturgy and interdisciplinarity
- Pedro Cravinho, Senior Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology and Jazz Studies, RBC Academic Liaison for Archives and Special Collections
You can watch a promotional video of our previous performance research project.