Installation

Staged around a scaled podium and the accompanying paraphernalia of a political event, Imagine Being a World Leader uses the fictitious “Summit for World Change 2008” to create the framework for a role-play exercise that teaches primary school children leadership and public speaking skills. Led by a professional public speaking coach (Ysabel Clare), the workshop and accompanying exercise book incorporate a variety of exercises tailored to teach children key rhetoric rules, body language and voice projection; all “vital tools” widely used by 
leaders in the art of successful persuasion. By breaking down these techniques into a series of engaging exercises which arm primary school pupils with the same set of skills, the workshop becomes a vehicle to address the artifice behind the methods used by politicians, public leaders and figures of authority, to persuade and win over an audience. The children become the medium through which the viewer can gain a novel insight and re-examine these set mechanisms of control, while at the same time bringing to the children an awareness of how the use of the spoken word can shape their lives.

www.show2008.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=501707&GroupID=501053&