The second meeting of the “MedArt – Methods of Education for Disadvantaged Adults Rooted in Theatre” project was held from the 16th to the 18th of October 2015 in Bratislava (Slovakia). The project is funded by the “Erasmus+, Key Action 2 – Partnerships Strategic Education for Adults” programme and involves 8 partners from 8 countries : apart from the Centre for Creative Development “Danilo Dolci”, the partnership consists of Divadlo Bez Domova (Coordinator – Slovakia), Acta Community Theatre (United Kingdom), Teatr Grodzki (Poland), Asociacion Acunagua (Spain), Drustvo ProSoc (Slovenia), MVKBP (Hungary), Stichting Hogeschool Rotterdam (Netherlands). The whole partnership has as a common denominator a strong experience in theatre – in the field of drama therapy in particular – and the use of non-formal education techniques within their projects that make use of theatrical methods. All partners have also had experience in EU projects and in the training and inclusion of people belonging to disadvantaged groups.
The meeting in Poland made it possible to discuss in detail the structure and contents of the Methodological Guide that will be edited to give innovative tools to all those operators who use theatre to promote the employability of disadvantaged people such as homeless people, marginalised youth, migrants and persons with fewer opportunities.
The consortium decided to include 28 drama therapy methods in the Guide, 4 for each partner with direct experience in the field. In addition, the international meeting was also an opportunity to discuss the next workshop to be held in Lanzarote (Spain) from the 1st to the 8th of July 2016. In this workshop the partners will see in action the theatre methodologies that will be included in the Methodological Guide, and each organisation will present its best methodologies for other project partners to test them and exchange good practices.
The general objectives of MedArt are:
- improving the knowledge, skills and abilities of professionals and social workers who work with disadvantaged adults as homeless, migrant, disabled, using the techniques of theatre as a tool for social inclusion;
- to create a manual collating methods from the individual partners in the work for the empowerment of disadvantaged adults through drama therapy techniques that will be tested during the implementation and they will become the basics of the drama therapy manual which will become a valuable aid for all social workers working with theatre and disadvantaged adults.
As mentioned before, next meeting will be in July 2016 in Lanzarote (Spain), in which the methodologies to be included in the final draft of the manual will be discussed and tested.
For further info, please contact CSC project coordinator, Dario Ferrante dario.ferrante@danilodolci.org
