The present project, called "Rural Inclusive Outdoor Theatre Education 3" (RIOTE 3) was born out of a previous "innovative large scale" project (RIOTE 2). www.riote.org The RIOTE 3 project aim is to develop three innovative intellectual outputs based on knowledge and skills exchange between performing arts organizations, dealing with adult education through outdoor theatre, physical theatre or other adult educational practices in rural settlements. The project is at the same time, based on the research question: 'As performing arts organizations, how can we develop our adult educational activity, so we can reach more of our target groups?' The three intellectual outputs: 1. A life quality measurement toolkit for those adult educators who want to implement technology based feedback in their work with groups and individuals. This is a toolkit what will answer for the need: how can we measure the impact of a theatre activity, performance or training? This impact measurement toolkit will be useful for adult educators but also for complex systems, like the Rural Touring Scheme, which does regular impact measurement with questionnaires. 2. A handbook guide to create rural touring center as we call in the project the Eco-polys model, what will function as a rural touring center serving a local network existing as an adult education reference point in European networking systems. 3. A practical guide for participatory theatre in remote villages, specially with elderly people, about the theme of a local myth re-discovering the collective narratives and memories transforming into a performance outdoor, so that the natural environment will take part of the scenery, increasing environmental consciousness. Outdoor performing adult education can revitalize culture in socially marginalized environments with proposing: dialog approach, critical thinking by revealing social problems, trigger the visualization of social change, interactive cultural exchange, empowerment of the community, collective education, development of multiple intelligence, strong pedagogical aspect and collaborative process. The national networks are supposed to meet on a long-term prospective, creating the European Rural Touring Network that sustains the impact and the outputs of the project. Planned work with the target group: The eight partners will work parallel in their own villages: Bingenheim (Germany), Méra (Romania), Kázsmárk (Hungary), South Peterton (UK), Pontelagoscuro (Italy), Ravne na Koroškem (Slovenia), Máriagyűd (Hungary). One theatre group will be formed in each village with approximately 10-20 participants, through (at least a weekly) regular training process, what will be leaded by one or two mentors of the partner organization in the relevant country. The 30% of the amateur theatre group should be older than 60 years old, since one of our main aims is to foster inter-generational dialogue. The climax of the working process will be the international Joint Staff Training of the host country, when the relevant partner will show its work with the target community to the project partners. (This can be different in those cases who are hosting JST in an early period of the project they will hold their performances in the end, during their Multiplier Events). The theme: should be a local myth of the village, a story, an intangible local heritage what can be re-discovered and transformed into a narrative what is connected to the memory or to the collective consciousness of the community. The length of this work can vary, the partner has to plan it according to its conditions, but it should not be shorter than two months (or 14 appointments with the community) ending with a performance. The mentors will participate alternately during the eight international joint staff training, where they will learn new methods to implement it in their village-groups. One of these methods is the application of Polar test, measuring life quality through analyzing Heart Rate Variability (HRV), what will be applied consequently also for the target community to measure group-members life quality at the beginning of the project and later at the end of their creative working process, for three-three days, before during and after the theatre sessions/rehearsals. At end of the project the coordinator will create a final performance using every eight mythological narratives for a final European Anthropological Street Theatre performance.
There is one element which was in common in every RIOTE project: the intention of rural network building. This is a vision which can provide a long-term sustainability for the project results. On this field the RIOTE 3 project reached finally the most consistent results. Every partner launched their network (more explanation in the "Folllow-up" down). Other main elements are connected to the Intellectual Outputs IO1 and IO3. The book of IO1 (9th sense) is highly innovative, a combination of two fields (HRV measurement&theatre training) which were not developed in one workshop process. The IO3 (Myth behind the community) is meant to be an additional literature on the field of participatory theatre, which is well documented after it's revolutionary grow since 70's and in Eastern Europe since 90's but those intercultural practices which are targeted on rural arias are missing. The project wanted to give more focus to a possible teaching-training technique in rural aria working especially with adults including elderly people. The conventional participatory TIE (Theatre In Education) is often limited by the reach of institutions. The IO3 is meant more to informal education and for NGOs working over the fields of institutions.
The present project application was written 2 and a half year ago on one hand as a complementary continuation of a previous project called RIOTE 2. This project called RIOTE 3 in order to continue a work with a mostly same partnership which carried out the previous two RIOTE projects since 2016. Therefore one of the main idea was to give more focus to the work with the adult learning groups in rural arias, so to develop the community cohesion skills and capacities of every partner organization: reaching a wider local network also as stakeholders and also as rural touring scheme; developing the staff of the organization to be more motivated on the field of adult education in rural aria. Other main need was to find more exact On the other hand we wanted to understand how it is possible in a more exact way to assess the success of a theatre event and its impact on the audience? The proposal from Utca-Szak was a perfect model to discover and develop a new approach. Measuring the audience and/or workshop participants cannot solve to qualify and quantify everything from the adult education aspect in a theatrical situation, but it also definitely can provide interesting data and diagrams about sypthom and phenomena.