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Comment by Lisa Baxter on December 12, 2011 at 20:14

Your words resonate John. It's interesting - I've spent years researching audiences, and the strongest, deepest, most lasting, life changing and richest impacts I encounter come from engagement. This is not to devalue the impact of the arts -  the impacts here are more of a cumulative process of becoming - which is also important.I'd like to see more arts organisations rethink the balance between 'consumption' and 'engagement' of the arts and to re-imagine their role as value creators in the communities they serve.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on December 12, 2011 at 11:05

Hi Lisa, my own connections with AfroReggae and other Brazilian companies go back many years to my time at Contact, Manchester.  Our work there focused on the creative voices of young people, though working with artists of all ages, and we particularly aimed to represent the cultural diversity of Manchester.  Today, there are young (and no longer so young) artists from Manchester's many communities working at Contact who joined us as teenagers back when I started there in 1999 - so long-term involvement has always been a key.  Central to this is supporting young people to become leaders - gaining skills to create their own work, and to inspire their peers.  It was this work that led to the Brazil links, as companies like AfroReggae and others are world leaders in this kind of community-led creativity.  in 2006 I got the chance to visit Brazil and to spend quite a bit of time with the projects I've mentioned - some of them working in quite extreme conditions by our standards.  Two pieces of learning that I came back with were:

a) that community leadership could be taken further than we had managed so far at Contact - supporting our young leaders not only to run projects, but to decide on what kind of outreach to engage in and who we should aim to reach; this led to an initiative called Future Fires which was one of my favourite achievements at Contact and is still thriving today; 

b) (and this was a more personal lesson)  not all the projects I most admired had a social goal per se - for example, Lia Rodrigues is one of Brazil's most significant choreographers; she relocated her studio to a favela as she wanted to live closer to the reality of daily life in Brazil; she avoided any direct educational activity, but opened her studio to anyone who wanted to visit; today several of her professional dancers come from that favela. 

At NTW we have placed engagement at the heart of everything we do.  That doesn't mean that we always manage to engage everyone in everything, or that every project is as rooted in the community as we would like it to be, but it means we have an engagement as a goal that we always test ourselves against.  NTW TEAM is a very practical way to say to anyone who wants to be part of what we do that they are welcome.  And there are many initiatives - from our Assembly project to this website to big shows like The Passion - that reflect this goal.  And when we can't be AfroReggae, it can be equally important to be Lia Rodrigues - placing ourselves quietly in the heart of communities, gently listening to what may be happening, and allowing ourselves to be changed.

Comment by Devinda De Silva on December 10, 2011 at 3:52

Hi Lisa. NTW were lucky enough to be part of a cultural knowledge exchange between the UK & Brazil last year. You can find my blog about it (aptly titled 'Learning from Brazil') here. Learning about the Points of Culture programme, which was an initiative that created an entire network of socially committed cultural projects in Brazil, was a huge inspiration and something which has influenced my thinking towards what can be achieved by NTW and communities throughout Wales.

Comment by Lisa Baxter on December 9, 2011 at 11:07

I've just spent a wonderful 30 minutes exploring your inspiration, and feel inspired myself. What I find refreshingly different about these companies is their genuine rooted-ness within a community, their focus on creating and delivering social value in both a participatory and presentational way, and the sheer authenticity, heart and soul that exudes from ALL of them. One quote stands out from me where Afroreggae say they 'harness the ingenuity and creativity of their communities' - it's great that they acknowledge creativity, but how wonderful that they also see 'ingenuity' ... if only we had more of that here. So next up John ... how is this inspiration informing your thinking and practice.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on December 8, 2011 at 11:23

Hi Lisa. Check out some of these companies:  AfroReggae and the UK programme they've been involved with - From the Favela to the World  Also Nos do Morro and Spetaculo - jsut some of the many companies working with communities and young people in innovative and committed ways.  Also artists like Teatro Satyros, and Lia Rodrigues who make work that is often very abstract in form - but embedded in social commitment.  And also companie such as Teatro Vertigem who make deeply researched very beautiful work. There's also a lot of great digital work going on - most of it open source, and lot's of strong stuff from hip hop artists.