Over the past four days – and, if we count the residency projects, much longer – we have been exploring sounds of change rising from many different community arts projects. Some are melodic, some rhythmic, some loud and emphatically activist, some soft and empathically caring. These multiple and diverse sounds represent all gender positions and under-represented communities from around the globe. Many different voices, accents, and cultural inflections could be heard in our workshop spaces, on our stages and screens, and at our lunch and dinner tables. And even if we couldn’t hear all of it we instinctively understood the quintessential message underneath them all: that meaningful art created in caring, innovative, and creative joint ventures between artists and community residents is indispensable for tackling the huge challenges that our troubled world faces.
For this afternoon programme, under the gentle guidance of our festival resident MetX, we create a percussive layer that we will be able to modulate as we go. Meanwhile, on top or in between this improvised soundscape we invite you to spontaneously express verbal or non-verbal statements (a rap, a song, a tune, a tale, a dance) about a special moment, image, or sensation at our festival that for you captured a sound of change.
This closing conversation will be moderated by Dessa Quesada Palm. Dessa is an artist-teacher-advocate from the Philippines and board member of IMPACT, a global organization engaging arts and culture to transform conflict and build more creative, inclusive societies. Her passion in people’s theater was kindled at 13 when she joined the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). Dessa served as Head of the Committee on Dramatic Arts of the Philippine National Commission for Culture and the Arts from 2017-2019, and has conducted theater and thematic workshops all over the Philippines as well as parts of Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. She is currently the Artistic Director of the Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts in Dumaguete City and a faculty at the Silliman University.