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…
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 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/…
It is with deep sadness that we learned that our good friend, colleague, photographer and community arts organizer Kevin Ryan passed away on 22 April 2020. Most recently, we had the incredible privilege of closely working with Kev on the photo book The Way We Move…, which documented our 2017 festival. It contains many powerful…
The IMPACT group, which was also going to be present at ICAF-8 with several activities, invites you to participate in an online virtual Learning Exchange on the topic of Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation (ACCT). This Learning Exchange is co-convened by Artasfoundation, Crear Vale la Pena (CVLP), Free Culture Invisible, Fundación Cambio Democrático (FCD), Humanity United(HU), International Community Arts Festival (ICAF), Imagining Together: Platform for Arts,…
We found Segun Adefila (pronounce: Shay Goon), as happens so often within the ICAF network, in a serendipitous way. A colleague in Trinidad who had studied in Nigeria connected us with some theatre professors there and they, in turn, pointed us to Segun. We then had a few Skype conversations with Segun and suddenly, out of…
The acronym K&A stands for Karla Isidorou and Alexandra Bellon, two gentle, playful community-minded artists with complex cultural roots based in Geneva, Switzerland. They have been trained in music, theatre and visual arts and have been creating amazing participatory projects in different parts of the world . In these, they always find new ways for people…