Legislative Theatre Project - Folkestone Performing Arts Company
Have Your Say in the Future of Folkestone!
Date: Saturday 18th October
Time: 11.00 - 18.00
- 11am to 1pm - Participants develop ideas around lived experiences, addressing local or national policy challenges.
- 2pm to 4pm - Develop these ideas into short plays by rehearsing & performing in front of each other.
- 5pm - 6pm - Perform plays and get audience interventions.
[end of day for participants]
- 6pm - 7pm - feedback & feed forward with audience members.
Sign up as a participant!
We are currently recruiting participants for the project. Lunch will be provided.
Interested? Please get in touch: folkestonepac@gmail.com
Location: Sunflower House Folkestone, 45 Foord Road CT19 5AE
Are you tired of shouting at the television, radio, or your mobile phone, having ideas about what needs to change — but feeling unheard?
Do you want to improve Folkestone's environment, housing, traffic, community spaces, local economy or other issue — but no platform to share them?
Now’s your chance to be heard. Let’s stop shouting into the void and start building something better, together: Be a part of a unique form of advocating and local democracy development.
We are currently recruiting participants for the project. Lunch will be provided.
Join the Folkestone Performing Art’s Company’s Legislative Theatre Project: Saturday 18 October, 11am - 6pm
Get in touch: folkestonepac@gmail.com
Location: Sunflower House Folkestone, 45 Foord Road CT19 5AE
HOW DOES IT WORK?
- Create & Perform: Community members create & perform an original play based on lived experiences, addressing local challenges.
- Propose: Audiences of local politicians, advocates and change-makers collaboratively shape these alternative ideas into specific policy proposals, followed by deliberation, debate, and amendments to embed systemic change.
- Commit: Policymakers and advocates make commitments to action based on the proposals.
Through this participatory policymaking, community members propose, debate, and vote on new policies and policy changes.
The Folkestone Performing Arts Company’s Legislative Theatre Project will bring the local community & and policy-makers (councillors, MPs, business owners and other change-makers) together to co-create innovative and effective solutions to complex challenges that are faced by Folkestone residents. Community members will spend the morning creating a short piece of theatre based on lived experiences, addressing local or national policy challenges.
In the afternoon, they will perform this play in front of an audience of key policy makers, business owners, political leaders and others with the hope of legislating systemic change in the community. In it, a short play is created which ‘ends badly’ for the protagonist or main character. The play is then ‘rewound’ and the audience is asked to come up on stage to try out other, more positive, strategies to have a different outcome. In this way, the actors and the audience ‘rehearse life’ within the safety of ‘play acting’.
Artistic Director Matthew Hahn, who will be facilitating the workshop, has over 20 years of experience as a theatre for development practitioner in working with communities in struggle. He has co-created interactive and participatory international theatre projects focusing on developing and enabling young people, social cohesion, peace-making and conflict resolution in the Global South & North.
A Theory of Change is a method that explains how a given intervention, or set of interventions, can lead to a specific developmental change. Theatre can be a powerful tool in enacting such a theory by supporting systemic change and / or policy development. This can be demonstrated by the interactive ‘Legislative Theatre’ process: Legislative Theatre opens the possibility for change to be catalysed and creates a platform for the advocacy of rights. Working beyond issue awareness and community building, Legislative Theatre allows the participants to address the obstacles or oppressions they face to key policymakers in the audience who then interact with the play with the hope that these policymakers will then legislate systemic change in the community. This form uses participatory and interactive theatre techniques to examine communication breakdown and power imbalance.
You can find out about all participating artists >>
What Connects Us
What Divides Us
(Un)Imagined Futures
Follow the programme on our socials >>
Find out more about the artist:
www.fpac.info
@folk_performing_arts_company
