The mediators for civic responsibility at St-Luc high school got together for the 5th time to continue working on and practicing their intervention project. We won’t be divulging their plan for the week of civic responsibility happening in April (in big part due to the fact that it is still in its conception phase!) but this week, the participants have already produced a good quantity of material that will be used for their sensitization campaign.
Farah and Daniella, our two fabulous performing arts animators, began the workshop with a writing workshop. Individually, everyone had to write five verbs related to what they dreamed of when they thought of a city with no violence.
so cencentrated…
Right away, Farah asked the group to go straight from writing to getting up to act out the feeling of being « shy », whether exaggerated or in a subtle manner.
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Here is what shyness looks like…
After playing shy, the students played out being aggressive.
No one was expecting the next task to be going back to their desks and writing down 5 verbs relating to violence. How do you caracterize violence in 5 words??
Pens down, all students got up and got back into « actor’s studio » action, when Farah asked two students to play the bully and the victim. The rest of the mediators had to side with one or the other, and play either the crowd that eggs on, or the crowd who intervenes, but without using words, just their bodies in space.
And… Cut!
We took a break from the acting to talk about the themes that had been spoken about in preceding workshops, to choose the ones the majority of students wanted to address, talk about, or explore in this workshop and the next ones, to illustrate in their intervention which will raise awareness with other youth and in their communities.
– Safety in school
– Youth profiling
– Being a youth with no money to do activities
– Homophobia
– Cyber-bullying
– Socio-economic differences
– Heathy relationships
– The maintenance of one’s environment (school, neighbourhood, etc).
– Cultural mixity
– Inclusion
– Racial profiling
After voting, the mediators on school safety, youth profiling, homophobia, cyber-intimidation, and the maintenance of one’s environment.
On that note, you guessed it ! We went back to acting 🙂 and once again, the youth played the role of bully and victim, but in super slow mode, to give the scene better visibility, and for it to convey more information. Two youths played Directors, giving feedback to their friends to make the scene more realistic: not how this kind of thing happens in an ideal world, but how it really happens.
The actors get feedback
Indeed, at the beginning, as many people were siding with the victim and they were defending that person. In the end, however, everyone agreed that it wouldn’t happen this way. Not that many people side with the person being bullied, and it is rare for someone, anyone, to actually intervene in that person’s favour.
Furthermore, there had to be a context. They had to mime insults, mime misunderstandings, and suffering. It is rarely the case that a fight happens out of nowhere! It was not an easy exercise. But the students had fun acting in spite of the delicate subject matter!
And all goes out the window! (acting that is!)
Finally, for the last part of the workshop, everyone went back to their paper and wrote 15 new words linked to the four chosen themes: 5 words to describe the theme, 5 words to describe the feelings experienced by someone in the situation, and 5 words to describe a solution.
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one of the spoken word texts written
After, Farah asked the participants to recall the beat that one of them had created in the preceding workshop, and on that beat performed by everyone, one volunteer would read out their words as a spoken word, taking inspiration from a gospel pastor. The 15 words would be divided by the chorus, which would be the strongest word in the eyes of the writer.
With their words, their text and their beat, the kids came up with a really moving intervention. The resulting montage really came from their heart, on themes that are important to them, and it reflects their personalities. All we cans ay at this point is, we can’t wait to keep working with them on this project!
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Yeah!
Bien dans ma Ville! 