Forum and Image Theatre Manual

Aims of the tool

Who are the persons that this toolkit is addressed to?
- Practitioners in Theatre of the Oppressed field ( to enrich their toolbox, to diversify their understanding of these methods, to deepen their methodological competencies, to get inspired);
- Beginners in the field (to have a concrete hands-on manual that could guide them in their work, to fill the gaps in their understanding and approach, to sharpen their facilitation skills, to contribute to their independence as users);
- People interested to work with these methods (it will provide an almost complete understanding of how the authors work with the methods, a detailed curricula designed to help newcomers to the field as well and free consultation opportunity)
- Curious people (it might inspire them to start working with these methods BUT a mention needs to be made: this is not a novel, it is quite a technical material- not quite a before naptime reading option)

Description of the tool

This tool is in fact an ambitious initiative. It is based on years of experience of the A.R.T. Fusion Association (Romania) in working with Theatre of the Oppressed methods but inspired by the first Africa-Europe youth cooperation project focused on Forum Theatre: “Act for What You Believe”. AWB was developed as a capacity building project and youth workers coming from the NGOs (partners in the project) from Romania, Bulgaria, Ghana, Slovenia, Tanzania and Uganda developed practical competencies in working with Image and Forum Theatre for dealing more efficiently with social problems, conflicts and oppression from their community.

In this manual the reader will get to know in details the following:
- Description of Forum Theatre and Image Theatre Methodology as it was developed and applied in the last years by A.R.T. Fusion groups (small warning in this regard: it may certainly differ from how other practitioners use it)
- Concrete examples of FT and IT (for a deeper understanding of what the methodology looks like in practice)
- Detailed Curricula for working with Forum and Image Theatre (with specific instructions for beginners in the field)
- Detailed guidelines for the role of Joker
- Contact details of experienced multipliers from Europe and Africa that can provide free consultation in working with these methods for beginners.

This represents an ambitious initiative not only because it is first of this kind that will be freely shared with anybody interested but also because it includes considerations related to different cultures where the methods could be used. The inspiration for this product came from an intercontinental project that provided a reasonable amount of reflections related to what can work or not in very different cultural settings.

Check out the movie from the project as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTbdnd02WrY

If you are interested in having a hard copy of the manual please contact us!

The project was supported financially through Youth in Action program (action 3.2) of European Commission!