Ep.40 Performing Environmental Education

Francine Kilemann and Marcia Donadel are bringing their experience with site-specific, immersive theatre to elementary school education in Brazil.  Through Plato Cultural they lead students and teachers in creating fictional worlds in which the children become “SOS Agents” from the future tasked with helping to save the environment. The months-long performance is one in which nothing is taught in the traditional sense of the word.  Instead, the students learn through the experience of performing.  “Once we enter this fictional world,” says Kilemann, “we can ask ‘What if?’ and a range of possibilities emerge that we wouldn’t have if we had limited ourselves to the ‘facts.’”  Hosted by Desire Wandan. ----more---- Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world. ----more---- The East Side Institute is a hub for a diverse and emergent community of social activists, thought leaders, and practitioners who are reigniting our human abilities to imagine, create and perform beyond ourselves—to develop.  Each episode will introduce you to another performance activist or play revolutionary from around the world.   To learn more about the East Side Institute you can go to https://eastsideinstitute.org/   Made possible in part by Growing Social Therapeutics: The Baylah Wolfe Fund.