Category: What we do
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The Yuva Ekta Playback Theatre Group
September 30, 2019The Yuva Ekta Playback Theatre group is the only active playback group in Delhi. We came into formal existence in 2018. Our training in the Playback form, however, started much earlier when actors, facilitators, and volunteers associated with The Yuva Ekta Foundation trained under Mr. Brian Tasker from Bristol, United Kingdom. We furthered our training under Mr. Gerry Orkin from the Wollongong Playback Theatre Company, Australia through his visits in 2017 & 2018, encouraging us to engage more consistently with the Playback form.
We now have actors and Expressive Arts facilitators from different socio-economic backgrounds, who meet and practice regularly.
Our first-ever application of Playback was a community theatre performance in a project with ‘Youth At-Risk’ in Jahangirpuri, an urban slum in North-West Delhi. We used Playback to bring into active awareness, issues faced by community members. It was an eye-opener for us as audiences spoke about concerns regarding living conditions and their children’s safety in such circumstances. Once our performance was completed, the community members expressed a need to come together to solve issues that plagued them: rampant drug abuse, crime, and communal tensions.
Keeping in mind the larger intent of The Yuva Ekta Foundation, all our performances have been conducted in spaces where one would least expect a session: juvenile prisons and conference halls of government buildings and corporate offices. The idea is to use Playback in real-time settings and to start addressing issues where they exist.
We are looking forward to sharing our experiences and learnings at the IPTN conference in December 2019, where Playback practitioners from across the globe will gather for the first time in India to discuss the present and future of this art form.
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Family, Diwali and more… Building bridges through Playback Theatre
New DelhiPlayback Theatre (PT) has been a recent addition to our repertoire of tools while working with Children in Conflict with Law. Our first ever Playback session with CICL came in May 2017 when we conducted an awareness and capacity building session on ‘Dreams, Delinquency and Destitution’ at the Delhi Judicial Academy. The audience members included members of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Juvenile Justice Boards (JJB) and civil society members working in the field of Juvenile Justice. Many office bearers were moved into sharing the aspirations they had when they were younger, bringing home the power of PT to connect different stakeholders through shared experiences Ever since then, Playback has become an active component of our Expressive Arts inventory
As part of our research study at the Place of Safety and Special Home for Boys, Majnu ka Tila, we used Playback as a standalone Expressive Arts tool to bring out stories and emotions that our participants were otherwise inhibited to express. The session ultimately became one of our most powerful and memorable experiences at the Home. It was the first time we were able to connect all participants beyond enmities and conflicts in a Communitas based on family and memories of Diwali.
We went on to conduct another Playback session in December 2018 as part of our ‘Open Day’ celebrations during the study. We invited family members of our participants, Superintendents of other Homes and Magistrates working at JJB to be a part of the day’s proceedings. After our participants displayed their work, this gathering became the audience for the Playback session. To our surprise, the senior officials opened up about the vulnerabilities around family and memories of childhood.
In this way, we managed to find ‘common threads’ for everyone involved to look at each other beyond the lens of a case number, a mistrusting judge or quite simply ‘a court date’. Playback, was largely successful in making this human connect come to life.
Our observations have been carefully recorded in a research paper titled ‘Playback Theatre with Children in Conflict with Law: An exploratory study’, which will be presented at the International Playback Theatre Network conference to be held in Bangalore this December.
Thread For Humanity
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Playback Theatre and the Corporate World
New DelhiOur first exposure to public performances of Playback was in a corporate office in Delhi. Since our group was just in its nascent stages, we started working with the audience on issues around family and memories of home, in order to find emotional connections between employees beyond the workspace.
Since then, we’ve gone on to explore deeper, more significant issues in the workspaces. Our first bite at this was to use Playback to address ‘Sexual Harassment at Workspace’ as part of an awareness program at a Corporate Office. The response was invigorating. Through this broad topic, we went moved into realizing genuine concerns around office hierarchy and finding ‘safe spaces’ for working employees. Most members in senior positions told us that this was an eye-opener for them, looking at the newer workforce through a more personal lens.
More recently in June this year, we tied up with the ‘Ek-Prana’ Foundation to work on ‘Stress Management and Well Being’. Our session was an inauguration into a day where ‘Ek-Prana’ Foundation spoke about maintaining one’s physical and mental health in today’s tough work environment. The Playback session opened up participants into talking about the conflicts between office and personal responsibilities through the kind of pressures that exist today.
If you are a corporate, wanting to work on aspects of work like ‘teambuilding’, ‘work-life balance’, ‘Sexual Harassment at Workspace’ and more, do get in touch with us at office@yuvaektafoundation.org
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To Painting Diyas and Cultivating Friendships
February 26, 2018Last year, Denave India, an organisation based in Greater Noida, presented us with an opportunity to display our work with Arts at a Diwali Exhibition in their offices. For us, it was more than just a presentation. It was a chance to connect and reach out. For this initiative, we organised a ‘Diya-painting workshop’ with citizens of Aradhana Senior Citizen’s home and Bal Shayog, a shelter home for boys, under our newest project ‘Homecoming- Bridging Generations’.
Our effort in this project is to bring together ‘Youth at Risk’ living under ‘Care and Protection’ to inmates in Old Age Homes. This interaction is facilitated through Expressive Arts. Employees from Denave India also volunteered in this workshop and added a lot of enthusiasm and cheer in the atmosphere.
Each piece was a story that we were proud to narrate. Many purchased items for Diwali, while some contributed to the cause. Each act of giving meant a connection with our intent and it is exactly what we’d hoped for. We further displayed our work at Diwali Exhibitions in Vasant Kunj and Teamwork Arts Pvt. Ltd.
We express our heartfelt gratitude to Denave for giving us this opportunity and a big thank you to those who contributed to the cause. The proceeds collected from these exhibitions will go into facilitating more such Expressive Arts Programs.
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Planter up-cycling activity at Aradhana home for senior citizens
February 22, 2018On 5th January 2018, we had our first interaction of the year at Aradhana Senior Citizen Home. After a brief warm up,the children from Bal Sahyog, a shelter home for boys in Connaught Place, ran into the home to meet their ‘Daadis‘. It was as if the entire home came to life as they shouted Happy New Year running around the corridors and peeping into the rooms. Wide smiles spread across the residents’ faces.
We got to work in pairs for the day’s activity, which was to plant saplings in a disposable box and then paint it. They were all excited about the task. The residents held the saplings while the kids put compost into the planters.The elders made sure that the box was cleaned before they started to paint it. They exchanged various options to paint these planters and guided the kids, sometimes indulging them by giving in to their ideas.
The highlight of our workshop was the fact that Mrs Banerjee, one of the senior residents at the home, came down for the first time to participate in the workshop. For the past few workshops, she was interested but watched the activity from her room, a floor above the activity space. This time, the enthusiasm of the kids was such that she came down and wholeheartedly participated in the workshop, paining a planter with her young partner from Bal Sahyog.
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The Young Visionary- 2015
November 14, 2017In 2015, responding to the need of the hour, The Young Visionary was a Student-Run Community Volunteer Program with the primary focus being ‘Waste Management and Environment Sustainability’. We divided Delhi into clusters, working through a six-month collaboration between Schools and NGOs with surrounding RWAs and municipal councils, to develop Community specific models of ‘Waste Management’.
Working with Bluebells School International, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and organisations like Delhi Shramik Sangathan, ROPIO and Ritinjali, we reached out to over 2000 SCHOOL and NGO students from the age group of 14-18 years.
The urgency was to inspire young People to ideate and execute innovative projects to make Delhi a Cleaner City. Urban Villages and Slums were chosen as sites where workshops on Waste Segregation were conducted. Community Walks and Street Plays in Schools helped us create an enthusiastic group of Green Ambassadors to take charge of GREEN ZONES across the city.
For the students, it was a diversification of their educational experience through the lens of Volunteering and Environmentalism. Leading projects on Solid Waste Management, they helped create opportunities for Social Entrepreneurship by involving communities in Up-Cycling Initiatives.
Under this banner we also conducted workshops at the offices of Teamwork Arts, shedding light on Wet Waste Management and with the help of experts, helping the office adapt a wet waste composting program.
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The Young Visionary Festival- 2009
The Young Visionary 2009 focused primarily on the “Stakeholder” – the individual and Human Being as we tried to understand what it means to be HUMAN and the core values are by which we define our “human-ness”. In the current scenario of competitiveness, are we merely reinforcing the “dog-eat-dog scenario” with our children? Is there a more humane way of achieving our dreams? And how does that impact on our relationship with our planet, our environment?
With that intention, the festival covered issues of Waste Management, Right To Information and Human Rights. A change in venue from Bal Bhawan to Gandhi Darshan also brought a change in emphasis. It was attended by by over 2000 students from 8 private schools, 12 government schools and 9 NGOs across different parts of India and various institutions from across the country. Activists from the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, who had pioneered the cause of Right to Information had graced the occasion with their presence. Key speakers like Mr. Deep Joshi, Swami Agnivesh, Mr. Ravi Aggarwal and Mr. Rakesh Mohan laid emphasis on the declining values in our ecosphere and the need for co-dependence between man and nature to save the environment.
Discussions on Human Rights were a key component of the festival. It was an effort to realise the value of human duty towards social evils that plague us. Field Trips prior to the festival to urban slums and The Yamuna Bio-diversity Park opened up the students to lifestyles and surrounding beyond their comfort zones. These experiences, coupled with interactive sessions and a creative display of music, theatre and art were an eye-opener for participants.
The Festival was concluded with an Action Plan that included steps the student fraternity can implement at various levels: of the household, the school and the community to bring changes in and around themselves.
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The Young Visionary Festival- 2007
Focussing on stakeholders in Sustainable Development, The Young Visionary 2007 was an initiative to help students understand the relationship between man and nature, reconciling economic development with the integrity of the environment
The three-day festival laid stress on Water Management, Deforestation and Recycling. Held at Bal Bhawan, the Festival was inaugurated by Smt. D. Purandeswari (then Minister of State, Education) and attended by other dignitaries from all walks of life.
Over 2500 students from 10 Private and 14 Government Schools in Delhi, along with rural and tribal students from across the country participated in this event, to understand the values inherent in sustainable development. During the course of the festival, scientists, academicians and grassroots’ activists addressed local as well as global issues, encouraging students to take affirmative action as stakeholders, to endorse models of development that are most sustainable for our planet.
Key speakers like Ms. Medha Patkar (Narmada Bachao Andolan), Mr. Ravi Agarwal (Toxics Link) and other “Green Warriors” from organisations like TERI, UNICEF, Goonj etc. encouraged the young participants to engage in creative thinking, problem solving and self learning. The festival timeline was spread across 3 days to give the students a participative exposure. Each morning the students had an opportunity to meet the activists who have battled these issues in various forums and have a wealth of experience to share. The afternoons offered workshops in creative expression like theatre, music, dance, painting, mural making, puppetry and others, through which the students would express their vision of environmental integrity. Film screenings, street plays, workshops, lectures enabled the children learn new skills which they used to generate an inspired Action Plan for themselves and their peer group.
Our vision of social integration and direct participation is possible only through an active public-private partnership. This festival was a celebration of that ideal and a further commitment to the Foundation’s cause of empowering the young people.
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The Young Visionary Festival- 2005
The Young Visionary 2005 was ‘A Festival of creative expression and youth empowerment’. A five day celebration, this innovative platform was devised by the Foundation for young people to come forward to express their Vision for the world they would like to inherit. Held at Bal Bhawan, The Young Visionary 2005” was our first attempt to bring all our young friends on a common platform, to share ideas and opinions and flow easily towards one another. Active workshops on Citizenship and Democracy had kick-started a year before the festival across 21 private and public schools in Delhi.
It was attended by the then Honorable Chief Minister of Delhi, Ms. Sheila Dikshit, industrialist Mr. Navin Jindal, Ms. Nandita Das, Mr. Pankaj Pachauri and many other eminent personalities who not only inspired students, but were left inspired by the ‘infectious enthusiasm of the students’.
The Young Visionary 2005 was a Carnival of Learning and Fun with over 2500 participants from private as well as Government and NGO schools, enabling the integration of different classes and backgrounds.
Theatre, music, dance, traditional and contemporary, a mingling of crafts people and artisans from various states in India, puppetry and street plays, workshops and lectures helped open a world of richness and diversity for our young Visionaries. During the day, we would run the drama/ music/ dance festivals, where each school would participate in a celebration of the art form.
Stalls were also made available for NGOs to set up small orientation booths – to explain their activities, and set up a volunteer drive.
At the end of the Festival, the Student Councils released an Action Plan: “Vision 2006” that was set into motion. A set of targets, along with a monitoring and review system made students active Stakeholders who would carry forward their learning from the Festival and think of innovative solutions to the problems at hand.
This festival was a cornerstone in The Foundation’s growth. It helped us connect with thousands of young people, many of whom form the core behind our work today!
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Homecoming- Bridging Generations
November 13, 2017“Dada, please sing for us?” Dada is popular. He changes the mood of the place with his energy sometimes. With insurmountable happiness Dada holds his guitar and starts strumming his favourite tune. The ease with which he can play the chords is delightful. He’s got the energy of a 20 year old because once the guitar is in his hand he doesn’t stop. In his frail yet melodious voice he sings ‘A Summer Holiday’, probably remembering his ‘summer of 69’?
The guitar is a collection of his memories, waiting to be tuned for whoever wants to listen. We are just the audience he needs.
The Homecoming Project is about opening the doors between generations. Many like Dada have a sandook full of unheard, cherished memoirs that they want to share. Each trunk has a lifetime of experience, the feeling of loss, separation, joy, abandonment, withdrawal and a dollop of hope for what lies beyond. Coming “Home”, one expects comfort, non-judgement and an unparalleled lightness not found beyond the homely confines. This project therefore has been launched to recreate that feeling.
As Social Welfare Schemes, Old Age Homes are built to inhabit the elderly who seek to live a dignified life as ‘senior citizens’. Many however, don’t have a say in this regard. They have no option but to find refuge in Old Age Homes. Rehabilitation however is not an easy process. The physiological changes at old age, combined with the emotional and psychological upheaval of leaving one’s ‘Home’ has always presented a challenge to caretakers.
Quite similarly, ‘Children’s Homes’ across the country offer an equal chance of life to ‘at-risk’ children. They provide shelter, nutrition and education to the ones who life on the margins of the socio-economic setup. The importance given to schemes surrounding rehabilitation and integration have received a great deal of attention recently.
The Homecoming Project is a recent addition to the Foundation. With a vision of fostering a relationship between members of different generations, we connect the youth from children’s homes in Delhi with senior citizens residing in Old Age Homes.
Within the chosen populace, there is a genuine need for connection to fill a void created by loss and lack of support. Senior citizens, with their years of experience would become guides and mentors for our young ones. Conversely, we feel that the vibrancy and the youthfulness of the children is a way to bring in joy and cheer into the lives of senior citizens.
Workshops normally take place at the old age home and range from group activities to inter-personal interactions. Sharing of life experiences is crucial, giving each group a chance to understand vulnerabilities and develop a sense of empathy. As the project progresses, we wish to take on artists and volunteers who’d like to engage with the two age groups with this program.
Methodologically, we pair up a senior citizen’s home and a children’s home in an area, conduct positive interventions through Expressive Arts to facilitate an interaction. Our current clusters include:
- Aradhna Senior Citizens Home and Bal Sahyog Children’s Home in Central Delhi
- Sahara Home for Senior Citizens and Arushi Girls Home (A unit of Salaam Balak Trust) in South Delhi
Homecoming is also a pilot format in many ways. Workshop modules have to changed and altered to suit all age groups. We have tried innovative interventions like Pizza Making and Diya Painting, organising participants in groups to help each other out. Singing and dancing have worked great as ice-breakers. Each passing session, more children and senior citizens develop close inter-personal bonds of love and affection. Many children look forward to meeting their ‘grandmothers’ the elderly wait for the ‘bachas’ eagerly.
We’ve just taken baby steps. We hope to expand this project, reaching out to more interested volunteers willing to contribute their time and energy to this project.