We continue to advance our collaboration with the University of Cape Town and Second Chance Theatre.
Our return visit was in late July 2022, with two members of Geese spending a week in Cape Town, South Africa. Practitioner Manager, Emma, and Senior Practitioner, Dave, explored work and co-delivered mask workshops with Second Chance practitioners, and delivered a workshop to dance and drama students at the University of Cape Town.
They also enjoyed exploring some cultural highlights of Cape Town, visiting District 6 Museum and Bo-Kaap Museum, taking part in a cultural, social and history tour around the coast, seeing the Cape Flats and townships, and climbing Lion’s Head and Table Mountain – the latter in 1 hour and 10 minutes!
“What stuck with me the most was the first day when Second Chance created scenes to give us an insight into South African culture, followed by shared stories of the reality of prison experiences. It really made me reflect on how that compares to our prison system here in the UK. I am keen to find ways to share creatively those differences in systems to raise awareness to wider audiences.”
– Emma
“The stories of life in Pollsmoor were both enlightening and terrifying, and forced us to think about the huge challenges that Second Chance experience when trying to deliver creative work in prisons, compared with our experience in the UK. I feel we have more techniques and ideas to share with Second Chance, and them with us. On the second exchange it would be great for Geese staff to see Second Chance work with a group in prison and it would be great for Second Chance to see more of our work in prisons. Hopefully this will give us a chance to look at how we adapt what we have learnt from each other.”
– Dave
Members of Second Chance Theatre will be coming back to Birmingham in December. Watch this space for updates and follow us on social media using the hashtag #UnmaskedExchange
Unmasked is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects.
