Learning, action, and behaviour change: effective Forum Theatre design for smallholder farmers

When does art support social action? This question remains central for artists and policymakers seeking to draw on the vivid salience of art to address pressing environmental and societal challenges. Key debates in the behaviour change literature concern the role of affect (emotion) and the impact of participatory versus one-way forms of artistic communication. This study explores these issues through the design and outcomes of a Forum Theatre production for cassava farmers in Northwest Cambodia. Forum Theatre avoids prescriptive messaging, instead enabling collective knowledge generation through dialogue, revision, and re-enactment. The production drew on farmers' lived experiences of environmental and socioeconomic oppressions such as pesticide use, economic migration, market volatility, debt, and land loss. Performed for audiences of 50-150 people across 13 villages, follow-up interviews a year later with 66 attendees revealed a nuanced relationship between the theatre, audience recollections, and subsequent changes in behaviour. While attendees recalled both emotionally charged and weak-affect elements of the forum, analysis showed that participant involvement was key to learning, which drove behaviour change. Conversely, emotion primarily increased recollection but did not directly translate to changes in behaviour. This finding challenges the widely presumed effectiveness of affect-laden messaging in driving targeted behaviour change, concluding that theatre-based initiatives should prioritise audience participation that nurtures learning, viewing affect as a driver of recollection rather than a direct catalyst for desired behavioural outcomes.