Arts:
The Derry Playhouse Theatre involves young people in theatrical and educational productions. The Playhouse describes itself as “a self-help, grass roots, bottom-up community development project which is people center with charitable status”. We think The Playhouse provides a vehicle by which to explore relationships without an emphasis on background. Many integrated schools involve art in their curriculum as do community centers, but The Playhouse primarily focuses on art. To learn more about the Derry Playhouse Theatre, you can visit their website here or look at their page on the Ireland Funds website here.
Springboard, established in 1992, is an organization which strives for cross-community unity. One of their projects we focused on was their Art in Diversity Project, and initiative funded by the Ireland Funds. The Art in Diversity Project involved over 100 children, who attended workshops for the debate and reflection over the subject of peace. The children’s ideas were incorporated into almost 700 images representing peace, conflict and images of parts of Northern Ireland. Then, these images were used in the construction of a 10ft x 50ft peace mural. To learn more about Springboard, you can access their website here or go to their page on the Ireland Funds site here.
Many of the projects we examined utilized art as a primary focus. Though programs such as The Derry Playhouse were centered around theater, dance, and other performance arts, many other programs, including schools and community centers, discuss the presence and importance of art-based activities. Similar to the way in which sports reassign identity in the form of teams and provide artificial goals and rules to focus on, we believe the art projects may make an analogous move. Particularly when they are centered around group activity, these programs require participants to work towards arbitrary goals of design and construction.
In the case of the theater or dance, the idea of playing a part, or being someone else functions in the same manner as becoming part of a ‘team’. ‘Playing’ someone else asks individuals to imagine they are not who they are – in order to do so, individuals may need to encounter the personal biases and viewpoints the characters they play hold, and, in turn, imagine how that person might believe those things. In other words, by playing parts, individuals are asked to confront subjectivity.