The project “Reconnect - Dance and theatre training in dialogue with the global south” is a pilot project that will create a new approach in practices of learning and unlearning arts to intervene in hegemonic knowledge in artistic production. The project activities are planned through a European partnership, involving three organisations: Protagon – Freunde und Foerderer Freier Theateraktion from Germany, Ondadurto Teatro from Italy and DOREA Educational Institute WTF. Therefore, this project will promote an experience of social integration for non-European participants and will open up the notion of the artistic work from a monopolized point of view to a constellation of methodologies and perspectives that entangles culture diversity in the artistic work. The participants of the project will go through a capacity building programme created by the project to train new ways of self-expression (learners) and methods to stimulate active citizenship (trainers), working with theatre, role-playing and situational games, discussion events with (local) politicians, world café, decolonial cultural dance, creative writing, and more. The activities take place within the context of cultural events, festivals, or meetings. The artists have the responsibility of proposing new ways of being in the world, based on diversity of opinion, culture and civic education. The project aims are to create artistic dialogues based on the ecology of knowledges and to analyses the colonial relations of artistic practices and knowledge. The project will create two transnational meetings and two intellectual Outputs based on artistic work and the coexistence of different forms of knowledge construction; three training activities with the themes of the project, as well Multiplier Events with the participation as research, discussions, and documentation with statements of scholars, curators and artists, to contribute internationally in the process of inclusion of migrants from the global in European societies and modes of artistic creation. Keywords: cultural dialogues; global South; social inclusion; non-hegemonic knowledges.
The participants of the project went through a capacity-building program to train new ways of self-expression (learners) and methods to stimulate active citizenship (trainers), working with theatre, role-playing and situational games, discussion events with (local) politicians, world café, decolonial cultural dance, creative writing and more. In addition to those 3 educational activities with participants, we have held other 3 events to disseminate the project in each country and have collaboratively written two books in which we reflect on and synthesize all the experience accumulated in the two years of the project. We have addressed several fundamental topics such as decolonization, migration, identity, whiteness, and gender, one of our main questions was how to frame all the resulting material in an organic and unitary perspective. From our research within the three main training settings that we have presented here (decolonial body, theater in nature, and queer practices), a new aesthetic emerged that allowed us to put those themes into a contemporary perspective: the idea of Diaspora as a new artistic framework. It analyzes the historical trauma of displacement and colonialism through an investigation of the decolonial body, patriarchy, queer identity, and current migration from an anti-dualistic point of view. On stage this approach helped us to put together body and identity investigations, the current tragedies of displacements of people and conflicts as well as our own fragilities. In this perspective, the Diaspora concept shows how it is possible to open up new cultural spaces beyond the boundaries of home and host country, becoming a new aesthetics for a post-migration theatre. Moreover, we involved local politicians in the discussion on public policies and artistic diversity, and our project was mentioned by Mirjam Schmidt (Member of the Hessian State Parliament and Spokesperson for Art and Culture) as an example of the implementation of diversity on the "masterplan Kultur " of Hessen: https://mirjamschmidt.de/2023/02/15/meine-rede-zur-regierungserklaerung-zum-masterplan-kultur/
The project “Reconnect - Dance and theatre training in dialogue with the global south” It was aimed to create a new approach in practices of learning arts, to intervene in the hegemonic knowledge in artistic production. We have experienced social integration for non-European participants and opened up a notion of the artistic work from a monopolized point of view to a constellation of methodologies and perspectives that entangles cultural diversity in the artistic work. Through practical activities, we reflect and discuss with the group of participants the importance of decolonizing our work as artists.