For more information on the project please visit our organisation's website for previous blogs: Valley and Vale Community Arts (click here)
This blog will contain the documentation and creative work of the women who are taking part in the project over the coming months, in the lead-up to the performances on International Women's Day, March 8th 2013.
My name is Tracy Evans and I work for Valley and Vale Community Arts as a Drama/Performance Development Worker.
I am very passionate about working with people using the arts and creativity to effect change and transformation, both on a personal and collective level. I was influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal when I studied Drama at the University of Manchester 15 years ago. I was fascinated to see how drama could be used to bring change into people's lives. Boal worked initially with peasants in Brazil as a way of supporting them to make changes in the way the land-owners treated them. From reading about and training in his work (Theatre of the Oppressed and Rainbow of Desire), I learned the following key principles which have resonated profoundly throughout my life:
1. You cannot change anyone else, only yourself.
2. As a facilitator of change, you cannot change things from the outside, you must work inside, with people to effect change.
Boal came to work in Europe, based in Paris, and discovered that Europeans also suffered from oppression- not so much in the way of basic standards of living, but in terms of the mind. He described it as 'cop in the head'....that Europeans think so much, they can oppress themselves. In Jungian terms, this might be called the saboteur.
Based in south Wales, Valley and Vale works with many deprived communities, but we also work with others who are seeking to bring change in to their lives in other ways. In order to do this, they choose creativity as a means. Creativity opens us up; it connects us; it allows our deep wisdom and experience to have its say; it tells us to play more; to lighten up; to experiment and discover new things. If we can tap into our creative powers then we can move mountains!
Each of the women on this project is from a completely different background, living in very different circumstances, but all share some common experiences: being a mother, living in rural/semi-rural Wales. It is my vision that these shared strands will be woven together during the course of the project. The invitation for all other mothers out there is to join us! Leave comments! Share examples of your own work! Let's use the wonder of technology to connect us, so that we might all be gathered together around near a stream, a river, a lake, listening to the running water and each other's voices.
www.valleyandvalecommunityarts.co.uk
Funded by:
Arts Coucil of Wales
Bridgend County Borough Council
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
