Amman, Jordan

Youth Engagement through Performing Arts

The two first weeks of October was a time of theater and performance for civic engagement in Amman. Development workers, youth activists, actors, clowns and other artists from the region were gathered to discuss and explore the possibilities of engaging youth through performing arts.

By Lone Palmus Jensen, Communication Assistant in Amman

19. October 2011

And it does not go down quietly when 20 young people, all with a passion for performing, are brought together under one roof to explore just that: The possibilities of using performing arts to promote youth civic engagement. The training was facilitated by two Danish trainers from ActionAid and had participants from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

One of these is Mutaz, an actor from Hebron in Palestine. He keeps busy with youth work and divides his time between three organizations in the West Bank. ”We do a lot of performances with children, where we discuss issues and concerns related to the society we live in,” Mutaz shares about his work at PSD-center, Partners for Sustainable Development. ”I have written a lot of scenarios and also performed some of them. Common for all of them is that they are all about change and other community related issues.”

The two-weeks training includes sessions on facilitation, debriefing and storytelling. It especially focuses on how to take advantage of an audience and get them to participate in discussing a major life issue. Two times during the workshop the participants have engaged others in a so-called forum theater, where the audience is involved to change the course of the play and find solutions for different challenges. ”Our first forum theater performance was about disabled people in society. You learn a lot by getting the perspectives of others and integrate them into the play,” Mutaz explains.

The participants all have different backgrounds. From actors and singers to coordinators from organizations in the region. Their common ground is that they all work with engaging youth through performing arts. Already a week into the course Mutaz sees some clear progress: ”We learn something new every day, both new methods about the theater and also how to implement it in our jobs. It is a good experience,” he concludes.