Comments of Finish learners

Arton speaks about the workshop in Tallinn, Estonia:

“The theme was Forum theater linked with traditional stories.

First day was an introduction to the Forum theater methodology and we did some mindfulness type of exercises. The main focus was to get to know your self. We also had a brief history in Forum theater and how it should be done. Next was an exercise where we focused on our experience in our life stories. We used old rags to make a dress. The dress was made of small pieces of canvas that had to sewed or tied together. It was used in the final presentation. We thought about our the stories of our childhood and tried to figure out in which one we belonged. I remembered the story about “the little prince”, which i did not think about while making the dress , because the instruction about the story came after we finished the dress. So i did not for a minute think about the story while making the dress. My dress became a hat. First it was a long piece  of tied up rags and i thought of it as a snake. Suddenly i realized that in the beginning of the story a snake eats an elephant and the picture looks like a hat but when you look at it closer, it is something else. The odd thing is also that i have a “Little Prince” tattoo.

We thought about in which category your story would fit. There were various categories: adventure, hero, from rags to riches and four others. Everyone who felt that their story would belong in one of the categories formed a group and performed a play first in the way of the old story and then a contemporary one.

We had some really interesting exercises every day.”

Petja, about mobility in Montluçon, France:

“This time the welcome comitée was some local musicians who played smooth and joyful melodies  at the train station when we arrived. The relaxed and happy week started very nicely. The workshops were very well scheduled and “time” was a very relative concept during the week. I remember best the workshop where we played many different rhythms, that we learned easily, even those who never played before. We practice for a while and then we combined the rhythms and the result was amazing. The other workshop that i liked very much was when we went to the nature . We were supposed to find an object from the nature that we felt was important to us. We were silent and tried to listen to our self , others and the nature. I felt this workshop was very good and comfortable.

The feeling through the week was relaxed and everybody was able to leave the so called “hurry” and “time schedule” behind. We also visited the Pop -museum which was an enlightening experience.”