Y Pwyllgor Diwylliant, y Gymraeg a Chwaraeon

Adolygiad Polisi: Cyfraniad y Celfyddydau a Chwaraeon at Adfywio Cymunedol

Small World Theatre

Dear Committee, Small World Theatre has been working in the field of Arts and Regeneration, Arts for Social Inclusion, as well as Arts and Culture for Development Overseas for 24 years. Please visit our website www.smallworld.org.uk There you will find details of current projects 3 briefly outlined below and a history of some of our work. Small World Theatre ( SWT) have been working on three projects in Wales and two projects in Uganda this year. "Diogel?/Safe?”. is in it’s second year in Swansea focussing on communities that have recently received or will soon be receiving refugees as part of the UK Government’s dispersal programme. This show was researched with newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees in Wales. The performance features puppetry and masked actors and has a refugee mentor as storyteller. SWT first present their show to the whole school and then work with a year group. Six drama sessions take place over six weeks. SWT concentrate of the children’s own feelings of being new or a stranger to devise a participant lead play. The refugee mentor is part of the company from first contact to the final discussion with the community who come to the pupil’s show. "Diogel?/Safe?” will soon transfer to Cardiff and Wrexham. "Beats the Box” is an Arts in Targeted Communities initiative coming up for its third year. This innovative participatory project uses theatre and the arts to directly help regenerate communities in deprived areas of West Wales. It helps tackle social exclusion and encourages young people and their communities to use the arts as a focus for development. See the website for more about the methods used and the giant processional puppets, masks, shadow puppets, drama sessions theatre for development, public art, carnival and site specific work that this group were keen to work on. In Uganda SWT worked with 180 young people in six schools to produce six forum theatre pieces based on their understanding of the 52 Rights of the Child. 40 participants went on to combine these six stories into a piece of theatre "These Rights Are Mine” presented three times at the National Theatre in Kampala. The audience comprised of the general public, invited government ministers, policy makers, street children and representatives from NGO’s and INGO’s. Training in SWT’s Arts and Culture for Development process was used on another visit to Uganda this year while working with AIDS orphans who requested Ann Shrosbree and Bill Hamblett from SWT to train them in Puppet making, devising stories and theatre for development techniques. A giant processional puppet was also made. Participants were motivated by their circumstances to learn as much as they could to enable them to use theatre to communicate effectively about HIV / AIDS. As you can see our high profile international work informs our regeneration and social inclusion work here in Wales. The Theatre for Development work we have pioneered has helped us make invaluable contacts world wide and we are sought out as Britain's top consultants for this sort of work. We know from years of experience that this sort of work is effective and beneficial to participants and communities. We could cite thousands of stories of everyday miracles, transformative experiences and personal triumphs over incredible circumstances . The work we and other arts and development workers do helps people negotiate change and where you have change, you in politics will know all too well, you have winners and losers. We have been privileged to work with some of societies "losers" in marginalised communities across three continents. We have learnt how strong and tenacious the human spirit is and how creative methods can produce real positive responses to desperate situations. When using these methods in aid and development work for agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, The British Council or INGO's like Save the Children or Oxfam we evaluate the work and it can be seen to be beneficial. The arts are known to be effective in development but at the moment the proof is dispersed throughout networks of artists and development institutions across the world. This however does not mean it is not so. The majority of our work is here in Wales where the participatory methods used give people the opportunity to shape their communities and their personal futures in a way that non arts based development practitioners often find hard to achieve. In an expanding world of information Small World Theater's methods can help communities make sense of that information and transform it into commonly held knowledge. SWT is expanding to meet the demand, requests for our work come in on a daily basis. We will need support in the future to meet this demand. As our organisation will begin it's 25th year in the spring we are seeking to to pass on our experience and knowledge to a successor generation. To this end we are seeking to raise about £600,000 to establish a centre here in West Wales to serve the area as well as being a National resource and a platform for attracting international participants and practitioners into this growing and vital area of Arts Development and Regeneration. I hope your committee members will be able to see the work that is being done across wales first hand Yours Bill Hamblett Co artistic director