Arts and Culture
for Development (ACD)
In an expanding world of information Small World Theatre projects can help communities
make sense of that information and transform it into commonly held knowledge.
We use participatory methods so that the people and communities we work with
really get a sense of joining in and controlling the outcomes.
New work in Tanzania for 2007 will hopefully lead to a further project in 2008. More news soon.
BRIEF HISTORY AND SUDAN, KENYA, HONG KONG, VIETNAM
Development can be built around people rather than people around development.
Small
World Theatre (SWT) is an educational charity that promotes the use of the performing,
digital and visual arts to help people creatively interpret their situation.
SWT has over 20 years direct experience in implementing culture in development
projects in UK, Africa and Asia. Ann Shrosbree and Bill Hamblett, SWT’s
senior consultants, are both skilled performance and visual artists who generally
work as a gender balanced team. Collaborations with diverse communities and
cultures have explored governance, rights and environmental issues. These creative
exchanges have produced outcomes such as a soap opera about social forestry
in Sudan, community theatre projects on democracy and disability in East Africa,
inter generational theatre projects in Wales, street theatre on Gender and Human
Rights in Nepal, peer education on Rights of the Child and HIV in Uganda and
giant street puppets in Europe.
Small
World practice has three main aspects:
1. workshops using participatory theatre methods to research/identify the communication
needs of a particular community or group.
2. participant-led community development, advocacy and awareness raising using
theatre techniques as a communication tool, encouraging audience participation
to affect the outcome of the drama.
3. their own performances as a professional theatre company.
The dynamic between product and process is a fine balance. SWT’s ACD work
introduces techniques for using drama as research, sometimes using intermediaries
such as mask or puppets to gather information. This enables a whole community
to create characters and narratives that reflect their concerns. Ideally performers
are from that specific community or they are known actors within that culture
and the work is placed within familiar cultural forms. This greatly enhances
audiences’ engagement and therefore the possibility of behavioral change.
The participatory research process is key to the performances (or product) becoming
a code through which social learning
can take place.
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Small World Theatre Canolfan Byd Bychan Bath House Road, Cardigan, Ceredigion Wales SA43 1JY Tel: 01239 615952 Fax :01239 615835 e mail info@smallworld.org.uk |
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