Community Practice
Photo by Charlene Galea
Artists in Community
These workshops share dance, movement and rhythm sessions with women seeking sanctuary living at the refugee camps in Malta. We adopt a people-centred approach in each session and use movement and dance as a language to facilitate understanding, compassion and empathy.
The essence of the sessions are the women to feel safe to share their stories, support each other and feel that they too are valued, belong and form part of the local community. Through the sessions, we, together with cultural mediators, use dance as a vehicle for self and collective empowerment amongst women, helping to form part of the initial process of integration.
A rhythm and dance community project
A community project for women seeking sanctuary developed as a positive adaptive response to the rising numbers of female migrants and to combat the negative impacts on their mental health partly due to a lack of access to opportunities for personal development and integration.
Through rhythm, dance and movement sessions, it used an approach that celebrates diversity through dance, movement and rhythm, including use of the djembe drum circles, and the tanztheater method of movement and dance.
The project encouraged the women to experience a liberating sense of joy, expression, and togetherness; it is the warmth found in holding someone’s hand, the connections made in people moving and breathing together, the opportunity to play and imagine alongside one. This was a a celebration of freedom of movement.
ĊAPċapċaqLAQ was a creative communities initiative led by Teatru Salesjan in collaboration with Dance Beyond Borders, TAMA and UNHCR Malta. It was funded by Arts Council Malta, and supported by St. Joseph School Sliema and Intercomp Malta.
