We have always adamantly believed in fostering community dialogue for promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. By building on the UK’s multicultural traditions and diversity and bringing together people of different cultures, backgrounds, belief systems, perspectives and experiences, we create intercultural dialogue and enable mutual understanding for the happiness and prosperity of all.
The People to People project aimed to strengthen the dialogue between people and communities with different social and cultural backgrounds and to develop critical and creative thinking by building on UK expertise. The geographic focus of the project was North-Eastern Hungary, where some of the most disadvantaged communities live in the country. One of the highlights of the project was the series of community arts (forum theatre and participatory video) workshops and a forum theatre performance.
Today, we continue to foster intercultural exchange and partnerships in all areas of life. Programmes such as Teaching English and Study UK create opportunities for individuals to succeed in life, enable knowledge transfer, network building and cultural exchange, while our 'Rivers of the World' and Connecting Classrooms project in 2010 established new connections, friendships, and trust among students of different nationalities.
Some details from the 9-month-long pilot:
- We organized UK study tours around 21st century skills and social enterprise. Education professionals and leaders, mayors, school leaders, and NGO leaders participated.
- We believe in the power of creative and critical thinking. It underpins the possibility of social innovation, that is, the ability of finding solutions to problems in our environment. In our Ideas Lab youth program, we piloted this.
- We used drama methods and children living in Lucfalva, Nógrád told their lives and wishes by making their own book of tales.
- We provided a group of teenagers living in Szomolya with a professional film crew in order to not only plan their own movie, but to actually realise it from the beginning to the end.
- We invited Cardboard Citizens, the famous British representative of the Theatre of the Oppressed method to Budapest to run an arts residency for artists and community workers.
- We held a series of Forum Theatre workshops and public presentation in Nyíregyháza.
- We organised teacher trainings around the 21.century skills of critical thinking and problem solving.
- The protagonists of P2P are the participants themselves: the focus is on their lives and how the project can transform it into a measurably positive direction. To this end, we mapped the communities in the form of a focus group research.
Our partners
Parforum Participatory Research Group, Partners Hungary Foundation, Milestone Institute, Egyesek Youth Association, Artemisszió Foundation, Aeffect Communications
Further cooperative partners
NESst, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts,, Real Ideas Organisation, Cardboard Citizens, Community Enterprise in Scotland, as well as municipalities, social enterprises, local community places and organisations.
The project is funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and delivered in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“If the audience and the actors are active participants and shapers of the story of «oppression», they will use this pattern of behaviour in real life too. This is how theater becomes a tool for us to become better actors in society.”