Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 5:00 pm – Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 7:30 pm
Creativity: In Place of War
Creativity: In Place of War
Date: Wednesday 25th November 2015, 5pm -7.30pm
Location: No 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH
Tickets: FREE – See Eventbrite for tickets
Join us for a panel discussion drawn from the founders of and contributors to In Place of War – an award winning initiative at the University of Manchester that has researched theatre and performance projects in sites of contemporary armed conflict.
Professor James Thompson: In Place of War
James Thompson is Professor of Applied and Social Theatre and Associate Vice President for Social Responsibility at the University of Manchester.
Ruth Daniel: How to make something from nothing
With 11 years’ experience of working in over 40 countries, Ruth’s talk explores the factors that bring about positive social change in some of the most marginalised communities, despite limited access to resources.
Ruth Daniel is Co-Director of In Place of War and founder of global music movement, Un-Convention. She is responsible for the creation of a revolutionary new creative entrepreneurial programme certified by the University of Manchester, which aims to empower those with the least resources. She is building cultural spaces in the most under-resourced communities in the world, through the recycling of unused music, studio, theatre and film equipment.
Zoë Marriage (SOAS) and Professora Paulinha (Capoeira Bem-Vindo): Total War and Capoeira as the art of total resistance
Since 2001, the era of the global terror and surveillance has generated forms of violence and control that are infinite over time (endless) and all-pervasive in their operations, employing political, legal and security architecture to extend power from the global to the individual. These forms of violence and control have been theorised by Mark Duffield as ‘total war’. This talk presents the case of the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira as an art of total resistance. Through the practice of somatic and musical art capoeira players not only deny the state power exerted over them, but forged identities that have become part of the Brazilian mainstream, and maintained a historical continuity that the state was attempting to eliminate. The boundless nature of control was met with the infinite nature of the game – a game with no rules, points or set timings.