AP1 Au Yi-Man John O’Toole

Yi-Man and John share their forthcoming book about the priceless value of applied theatre, skilfully applied, in developing capacity in adults involved in and training for caring professions, particularly the vital ‘soft skills’ of empathy, imagination, dialogue and reflective thinking. All of these are usually ignored by traditional training programs across the caring professions, world-wide in favour of procedural and content knowledge, or treated as ‘too hard’. The book is based on Yi-Man’s radical program for training workers in Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in China, providing participants and readers with guidelines for simultaneous learning in applied theatre, generic educational skills, social skills and self-knowledge.