Active Inquiry

Resilience – Sharing work across community groups

30th April, 2014 - Posted by Gavin - Comments Off on Resilience – Sharing work across community groups

As part of our Resilience Legislative Theatre project we have been working with three community groups since January to explore what the words Resilience, Surviving and Thriving mean to them.

We have been honoured to work with amazing participants from Shakti Women’s Aid, The Bethany Christian Trust and The ALMA project. On the evening of 23rd April all of these group came together to perform their pieces and learn and share with each other.

From The ALMA group we saw the story of Bill and Alma, a mental health service user and service provider. Through the game of Snakes and Ladders we experienced the ups and downs of negotiating the funding system for community work and the strains that it placed on their relationship.

From Shakti we saw the story of Fatima who had come out of an abusive relationship and had been shunned by her community. We saw the importance of Shakti as a organisation to support Fatima and explored how she could begin to rebuild her life and find new allies.

From the Bethany we saw a play set in the Job Centre exploring the story of Diane who had recently become redundant and was thrown into the benefits system which she found treated her like a number instead of a person. Quickly she lost her fight and just became part of this de-humanising system. The audience were then invited to replace Diane in the play to see what could be done and many interesting interventions and debates followed.

Overall it was an inspiring evening in which people with experience of homelessness, domestic abuse and mental health difficulties all came together to share stories of resilience.

As we begin our process of devising a piece of Legislative Theatre to explore how Edinburgh Council can pass new policy to support community organisations like Shakti, Bethany and ALMA, it has become even clearer how organisations like these are essential if we are to build a more equal and just society.