I’ve ran workshops with Open Clasp for 26yrs and this is my happy place. Women and chairs in a circle, playing and chatting about life. Thinking through the personal and political, agitating for change, celebrating strength, acknowledging what we need and fighting for a better world for ourselves, families, chosen and our communities.
I’m working with women from West End Women & Girls Centre, co-creators with Open Clasp and other women. It’s a Workforce Development Programme and I’m demonstrating how Open Clasp works using drama to support discussion and debate. The group are both experiencing the methodology and observing the training, doing two things at the same time.
We’re on week 5 and we’ve just looked at resilience, and one of the traits of emotionally resilient people is those that get it out of their head, they write. This is what they have been doing, getting things out of their heads using drama.
Everything the group has looked at is something they know, they are experts, and the space gives an opportunity (like it does with all groups) to place our experiences up on stage, to step back, observe and look at the 3D images created, hear the thoughts, words spoken and reflect.
When working with groups I’ve learnt that by week 4 or 5, this is when you feel the heart of what is being said, what is important and urgent for the group. The injustice and the question.
They ask ‘how do you create a narrative that is survivor led and not victim in its storytelling?’
How? When you have two small children and a perpetrator in your life? What role does resilience play in her story?
We looked at the traits of emotionally resilient people. They create scenes full of friendship and affirmation. They reflect on what they need in life, from friends and partners.
We ran a similar programme in 2022. Back then we had writers involved – we looked at methodology for facilitators and writers. They then ran workshops groups we had matched them with and wrote plays in response. This times we are focusing on the role of facilitators because we need to keep building and developing our workforce. Facilitators are key to the company’s work.
Open Clasp methodology isn’t about running drama workshops, this is about using the drama techniques to support confidence, self-esteem, conscious raising and to build power. When we work its not about ‘othering’ people, we as facilitators and actors, creative teams, producers and staff, we know the issue too (now its called led by and for).
I talk to the group about how much you share as a facilitator e.g. your experience of domestic abuse and/or childhood abuse, sexual assault. I share I’ve talked about resilience in a TEDx (its out there) and it was one of the worst moments in my life – It was a year when I thought ‘How do you survive’ and I was asking whether I/we/they would survive and thankfully we did. I explained that its important to share in order to not ‘other’ but not overshare, to have boundaries and structure.
I talk through decisions I’m making when designing workshops and in response to their questions to answers. They love the games and play, warmups and laughter. This has been the last thing I’ve written in this blog but play and games are the top and tail of every workshop.
I’ve been training/demonstrating how to facilitate, how we work at Open Clasp, our method, ethics.
Its five out of seven workshops in this programme. The last workshop we will conclude with a strategy for change. We will eat cake and evaluate.
Catrina
