On August 31, the Netherlands Fund for Cultural Participation (FCP) announced that it will be continuing to finance the International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) for the next four years. In its assessment of our application, the FCP advisory committee particularly praised our plans to develop more activities in between our triennial festivals, including a multifunctional digital…
A tip for our friends and colleagues in the Netherlands! Theater of the Opressed organisation Formaat and The Paulus Church from Rotterdam jointly invite you to the exhibition People and Papers from 11 to 30 August 2020in Formaat’s Studio at Westzeedijk 513 in Rotterdam.This exhibition was a part of the ICAF 2020 programme and since…
Thriving Facilitators Are you a heart-centred practitioner – change-worker, lecturer, artist & social/health-care worker? Are you committed to supporting others in the service of social change? Do you work in challenging settings with vulnerable groups with little support or are left feeling isolated and overwhelmed? We know that such experiences can create doubt, anxiety, and feelings of…
ICAF’s Eugene van Erven introduces UrbanDig and Ohi Pezoumi Arts Collective from Greece… I know for a fact that François introduced me to Giorgos Sachinis. I met him at an UrbanDig event in a popular neighbourhood in Athens on Sunday November 4, 2018. It was held in a sidewalk café with residents from the area…
A few days ago, cyclone Amphan hit Bangladesh and Northeast India, killing many people and destroying countless buildings. One of the hardest hit enterprises is Jana Sanskriti, one of the largest Theatre of the Oppressed organizations in the world. Jana Sanskriti is much more than a theatre company: Since 1985 it has been generating an…
We introduce Maria Gomide and her family. She is the artistic coordinator of an extraordinary travelling performance company from Brazil called Carroça de Mamulengos, which means something like ‘wagon full of puppets’. The company was founded in 1977 by Maria’s father and today encompasses three generations of family members. We first met Maria in early May…
We are very pleased to announce that on June 3rd we will organize a live streaming session with our colleagues from Roadside Theater (U.S.A.), the theater wing of grassroots arts and humanities institution Appalshop. We will join Appalshop in screening their documentary “Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song” as part of Appalshop’s ongoing Facebook Watch Parties. ‘Tell Me a Story,…
Nada Sabet is an Egyptian theatre director. She co-founded Noon Creative Enterprise in 2010-2011. Noon is one of very few applied theatre companies in Egypt. Through its educational performances and participatory workshops it facilitates delicate conversations at the community-level on challenging topics such as female circumcision and mental health, but also about the importance of…
We first discovered that community theatre existed in China while participating in the Performance Studies International conference at the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) in July 2014. There we met Dr. Daniel Shen, who teaches social drama at STA. He subsequently attended the ICAF summer school in 2016 and ICAF-7 in 2017. Daniel introduced us…
We met Amparo through the Residencies in Utrecht (RiU) programme, an initiative to connect inspiring international artists with many different social, educational and cultural layers in that Dutch city. A few years back she had come to the Netherlands as part of a touring dance production featuring at-risk youth from Buenos Aires connected to the “Danza/…