TYPE OF WORK
Performance and development, with special emphasis on participatory workshops.

TARGET GROUPS

• Human rights and gender with adult and juvenile prisoners, women prisoners and prison staff in Brazil and the UK
• Literacy, conflict, citizenship and identity with young people in Sri Lanka and in the UK

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
UK, North Africa and Middle East, South America, South Asia

COMPANY POLICY
People’s Palace Projects finds practical applications for theatre research. It aims: to devise and implement performance-based development projects, with an emphasis on human rights; to create active dialogue on development issues between NGOs, government agencies and theatre practitioners through workshops; to develop theatrical methodologies for use in such projects; to train organisations and individuals in participatory theatre techniques related to development work; to publish discussion documents, handbooks of good practice and case studies focusing on partnership, planning, implementation and sustainability.

SCALE OF PROJECTS
Number of practitioners: 2–20
Number of participants: 40–4500
Preparation time: 1 week – 2 months
Contact time: 1 day – 3 years+

PERMANENT STAFF
Paul Heritage, Director
James Thompson, Associate Director
Caoimhe McAuinchey, Research Associate
Yassmin Foster, Administrator (UK)
Magno Barros, Executive Director (Brazil)

HIV/AIDS Project (Brazil, 1998–1999)
Aims: To promote awareness and understanding of HIV/AIDS within the prison population, staff and guards.

Outcomes: Increased understanding of HIV/AIDS issues within the prison system as a whole. Creation of context for making safer decisions about conduct with potential risk. Greater civic involvement in the criminal justice system as a whole. Creation of cross-governmental and community partnerships.

Partners: Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, FUNAP (São Paulo State Prison Education Service), Ministry of Health (Brazil), British Council, Department for International Development, World Health Organisation.

Forum Theatre Project (Burkina Faso, 1998–2002)
Aims: To create forum based programmes on local development issues.

Outcomes: Four-year programme focusing primarily on health and youth issues. Training of ATB staff, creation of series of forum performances in all 32 regions of Burkina Faso. Performances and workshops at two international conferences in Burkina Faso with high-level participation from across the region.

Partners: Théâtre-Atelier Burkinabe (ATB), forum theatre and development organisation.

Staging Human Rights (Brazil, 2000–01)
Aims: To train prison education staff in forum theatre techniques and to raise the awareness and understanding of human rights issues with prisoners and prison staff.

Outcomes: Training of education and security staff; promotion and protection of human rights; public performances by prisoners and staff; 37 declarations/proposals for reform presented in public ceremony to State Secretary of Prison Administration by prisoners and staff; implementation of key reforms.

Partners: Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, FUNAP (São Paulo State Prison Education Service).

Staging Human Rights II
An investigation of the boundaries between performance and human rights within the criminal justice system in the UK and Brazil with specific reference to gender. (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil & UK, 2001–04)

Changing the Scene
Project to raise the awareness and understanding of human rights within the youth justice system of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Training and workshops include detained youths, prison staff and guards plus detainees’ families. (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2002–05)

Catrin John or Paul Heritage
Queen Mary University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS

T/F +44 (0)20 7882 7823

E ppp@qmul.ac.uk or p.heritage@qmul.ac.uk
W www.peoplespalace.org.br

“The project has proved to be a tremendous success and has clearly broken new ground in terms of approaches to human rights in a prison context.”
Malgolsia Settles, Community Fund Grants Officer, on Staging Human Rights (2002)

“I discovered a lot about myself. I didn’t feel I was a prisoner in that moment. When I was doing theatre I felt I was free, I could do anything that came into my imagination. Sometimes I would arrive and I would be sad. But as we started, and you said ‘let’s move our bodies’, I would filter myself, dedicate myself, I would escape.”
Female prisoner, on Staging Human Rights II (2002)

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