We are delighted to be partnering with the fantastic organisation that is www.shiftnz.org to develop and deliver a wellbeing project specifically for and driven by teenage girls with refugee backgrounds. We are incorporating a lot of play along with significant conversations aimed at helping these young women develop and grow.
Tag: Multicultural
NZ National Refugee Youth Council
Building relationships and building community through play! Voice Arts was invited to play with participants of the New Zealand Refugee Youth Council’s recent leadership conference. We’ll let these photos talk to the experience!
Together we Make a Nation
We are a champion! Read up about Voice Arts and our work with former refugees here at www.togetherwmn.nz. A fantastic new interactive documentary and website.
Parihaka – Lost and Found
Thanks to the Peace and Disarmament Education Trust, Voice Arts has funding to develop a network of partnerships to create a youth focused theatre project with participants from Wellington and Taranaki. Last year we visited Parihaka to seed this project, and we will be heading back there to start its growth.
Community Weavers
We are excited to begin a new storytelling and performance project in The Hutt celebrating the work of community weavers: the people and organisations who work to connect people to support, to services, to their neighbours, and to each other.
Korero at Parihaka
We’ve been visiting Parihaka to seed the possibilities of a collaborative project. The korero was rich and fruitful and we were hosted with great manaakitanga. Wellington East Girls College are joining us on this journey and we look forward to working with them.
Refugee Seniors Project 2013
In partnership with Refugee Trauma Recovery, Voice Arts Trust will deliver a cultural and social wellbeing project for elders* from the Wellington refugee community. While there are several regular development projects offered to young people with refugee backgrounds, little is offered for older people and isolation and marginalisation is very real for many. This project will offer a meeting place for older people to come together and to engage in a creative story-telling process. Their knowledge, their experiences, their voices will be documented, presented to the wider community and ultimately preserved. This programme will help create connections across ethnic communities and create connections between generations in their own cultures.
Cross-Cultural Women’s Project 2013/2014
Voice Arts Trust has been invited by “Wellington Women Work for Peace” to deliver a creative engagement project that will guide, support and empower a group of women from diverse cultural and social backgrounds to create a unique performance piece that speaks to the themes of International Women’s Day: peace and non violence, and that celebrates women. This performance will be premeired at a fund-raising dinner at on March 8th 2014, International Women’s Day. There is also the option of showcasing it to schools and other venues/occasions to support education and advocacy of these themes. This project is in development and workshops will begin in October.
National Youth Diversity Forum
The short film ‘Inspired By’ – created by the participants of our Refugee Storytelling Project has been selected for presentation at the National Youth Diversity Forum. Two of the participants will travel to Auckland for the forum, they will present the film and share their experience of the project. We thank the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO for funding the costs of this wonderful invitation.
Refugee Film Project 2012
Each year Voice Arts Trust delivers a drama-based refugee youth project. This year, in partnership with ChangeMakers Refugee Forum and with support from UNESCO, the focus has been on ‘the positive contributions that people with refugee backgrounds make to family, community and society’. Eight young people were supported to explore ideas of who they are inspired by and who they are proud of in their community. Each chose one person to create a narrative, poem or drama about and these eight stories are being weaved together into a short film approx 8 minutes in duration. The cultural make up of the group was Somali, Sudanese, Afghani and Colombian. To view the short film click here.