TYPE OF WORK
Performance for rights, development, conflict resolution, young people and women.

TARGET GROUPS
Africa: street dwellers; national community arts development/training projects; work with marginalised communities, rural, urban, youth and women on development and human rights; training and awareness raising for NGOs and development organisations.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
UK, North Africa and Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa

COMPANY POLICY
Jane Plastow works to train people in a range of approaches to arts and development work, and to make theatre with communities (including dance and music) which articulates issues and voices of marginalised people in a wide range of contexts. The work always takes into account the indigenous performance cultures of those involved, is non-dogmatic, and seeks to be sustainable.

Trains, writes and researches in relation to issues of methodology, evaluation and delivery of arts for development practice.

Delivers this work to a wide range of professional and non-professional practitioners in the UK and Africa.

SCALE OF PROJECTS
Number of practitioners: 1–17
Number of participants: 18–200
Preparation time: Varies
Contact time: 1 week – 3 months with some projects being phased over several years

Eritrea (1997)
Three-part project:

• Delivering basic training in arts for development to 30 amateur performers using Tigre and Bilen languages,over a two-month period, with three trainers. Resulting in two productions which toured Eritrea on issues of forced marriage and female circumcision, and on war trauma and mental health.
• Training-the-trainers project with 12 Tigrinya language students who had previously received basic training from the project. Two trainers and approximately 150 participants made a community play with villagers on issues of community cohesion and the need for improved services.
• A research project looking into Tigre and Bilen dance and storytelling forms in order to build up knowledge of how indigenous cultures could be used in making relevant theatre.

Partners: The Eritrean Bureau of Cultural Affairs and Oxfam.

Promoting Rights and Development through the Arts (UK, 2002)
Direction of British Council International Networking Event. 18 participants from 14 countries and 12 facilitators. The week-long intensive seminar for practitioners, policy makers and funders delivered practical and theoretical training/debate on the role of the arts in development and included work on a variety of forms such as forum theatre, dance, photography, video, writing, radio and prison theatre.

Sudan
Training practitioners to work on HIV and children’s rights issues with orphans and child prisoners. (spring 2003)

Eritrea
Training for artists in making community based theatre. (summer 2004)

Jane Plastow
Workshop Theatre
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT

T +44 (0)113 233 4722
F +44 (0)113 233 4774

E j.e.plastow@leeds.ac.uk

“In this community theatre, the audience are the whole family, so it can help Eritrea a lot to progress.”
Hamid, student (Eritrea, 1997)

“They didn’t only teach dance, they gave us life. How to live and change others. This is life and what Ethiopia needs.”
Meskerem, Company Member, Adugna Community Dance Theatre (Ethiopia)

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