Call for Volunteers at PPLG 2021

To apply as a Volunteer at PPLG 2021 please fill the application form on this page by (NEW!) Sunday 5 September 2021.

We are calling for Volunteers to support the production of the international online conference Play Perform Learn Grow: Creating Belonging in Times of Pandemic (PPLG 2021).

PPLG 2021 is taking place online on 10, 11, 12 September 2021.
190 Presenters from more than 30 countries will share their discoveries in education, research, therapy, art and community work and co-create new performances of belonging together with people and communities from all around the world.

PPLG 2021 is organized in collaboration with Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, Anamuh, East Side Institute of New York, Epineio Institute, Lesvos Solidarity and Odysseas Lesvos. It is produced by an international organizing team.

Responsibilities and tasks of Volunteers:

  • To support presenters during the parallel sessions, each in an allocated Zoom room, making sure that the minimum and maximum numbers of participants are met.
  • To keep track of the session’s duration and remind the presenters regarding the timely presentation of their work.
  • To give technical support to the presenters, if needed, during the online sessions (including hosting the Zoom call, admitting participants in waiting room, managing breakout rooms, managing screen shares and presentation materials, etc.).
  • To be a general reference for participants during the conference, recognizable as PPLG Volunteers.
  • To help build the community of PPLG and co-create throughout the conference an environment of belonging.

Requisites:

  • Experience on the online platform Zoom as host of meetings, on a computer.
  • Some experience in management of Zoom tech, including participant management, security options, Waiting room, Breakout rooms, screen/sound/video sharing, spotlighting, etc. During the Training Sessions all the tech aspects will be covered.
  • Access to a computer with a working webcam and microphone and Zoom installed, on a reliable and stable internet connection capable of supporting a smooth Zoom video call.
  • Availability during the days of the conference, taking into consideration one’s own time-zone and personal restrictions.
  • Commitment to participate in the online Training Sessions pre-conference (see below).

What we offer to Volunteers:

  • Free participation in the international PPLG 2021 conference, including access to all workshops, presentations and performances (check the program here: pplg.org/creative-program ).
  • Volunteering and participation certificate: a personal certificate will be issued to each Volunteer by the organizers of the conference, useful for any academic or professional use.
  • Training Sessions pre-conference: we offer to volunteers free online workshops (including theatre, dance, music and dramatherapy workshops) as volunteer training, before the production of the conference.
  • Personal and group support throughout the conference and further guidance whenever it is needed.

 

Training for Volunteers:
The Training Sessions for Volunteers will be hosted online, on Zoom.
Participation in the training workshops is a requisite to be accredited as PPLG 2021 Volunteers.
The Training will happen online on these days and times in Central European Summer Time (CEST).
Please check your local starting time here: https://time.is/1630_in_CEST

  • Wednesday 1 September 16.30 – 18.30 CEST
  • Monday 6 September 16.30 – 18.30 CEST
  • Wednesday 8 September 16.30 – 18.30 CEST

 

To apply as a Volunteer at PPLG 2021 please fill this application form by (NEW!) 5 September 2021.
For any questions, feel free to contact us: community@pplg.org

Creating Community Across Borders 2021

You are invited to join and co-create our free global performance community event ‘Creating Community Across Borders 2021’ (CCAB21) happening simultaneously across 10 countries.

The event is FREE!

To attend please register filling the form in this page.

We come together in this moment in history to create a collective performance of play and solidarity across borders.
We will share and create together performances across different mediums of art, song, dance, poetry, storytelling, and across borders, weaving together local contexts and international threads. Hosting our event from the island of Lesvos, we will gather around the fire in Nepal, share stories in UK, dance on a terrace under the Greek sky in response to poetry in Cyprus, blend music from Colombia and Syria, join the rhythms of drums in Uganda and make new rhythms, new dances, new songs among us.

We come from various contexts and backgrounds and we are all building communities and creating possibilities for dialogue and new kinds of conversations. We have all been through the Pandemic as you, living it both together and differently. In many of our countries we are struggling with Covid-19 and its consequences, we lack resources and mourn losses and we want to connect. We don’t come together only to celebrate. We come together to acknowledge, to gather strength, to create possibilities to connect and to heal through art. We want to bring you where we are and to create together something new with all that we have been through.

We invite you to perform with us and to help create new possibilities!

CCAB21 is organized by the PPLG Community. PPLG is a conference and a community of people from all around the world that use play and performance to heal trauma, stimulate imagination, build bridges and create possibilities. During CCAB21 we will launch the PPLG 2021 Creative Program. For more information visit: www.pplg.org.

CCAB21 will happen on the Zoom platform on Sunday 8th August 2021, from 18.00 to 20.00 CEST, check your local starting time here: https://time.is/1800_08_August_2021_in_CEST

Please fill the registration form on this page, and you will receive the Zoom link via email.

The event is FREE to attend!

Please forward this invitation to your local networks and communities. Everyone is welcome. For any further enquiries please contact: community@pplg.org.

PPLG Community team.

PPLG COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO PANDEMIC

Majo Bejarano, Proyecto Colibrí – Acompañamiento Creativo, Psychologist, Dance therapist, Performer (Costa Rica)

The lockdown caught me living with my fellow Choreomundus Students in London. It was an intense moment lived away from home, In a place I just had reached and I had to possible scenarios: fly back to a Costa Rica I have left a while ago or stay and rebuild a sense of home with these crazy fellows from all parts of the world and to whom I was not ready to let go. I had an intense process of building myself as my home and my friends as my family, taking care of each other. Art saved us when my friend Jorge Poveda initiated a performance act at 4pm of March 24th in the garden, where everyone could see from their windows. This act inaugurated what later he called “Emergency Festival: Performing the Pandemics” (Here´s the amazing register and artistic reelaboration of it by my friend Jorge Poveda: https://emergencyfestival.wordpress.com/). The attention paid at 4pm everyday to someone dancing their fears, their beliefs, their roots, our friendships generated a sense of belonging, and turned the garden into a point of encounter where we could have each other in movement. Some people had never performed in public in dance… some other had never collaborated to create with each other. Art gave us a sense of home and brought us a sense of continuity in a rupture process that is still on but now we are able to deal with the HOPE only dancing together brings.

 

David Diamond, Theatre for Living (Vancouver, Canada)

In terms of my work and community, (and theatre in general here) everything stopped. I had to cancel the 22nd Annual TfL Trainings for the summer and instead offered 6 days of 2 hours per day, discussion sessions about Theatre for Living with a great group of people from across Canada, the US, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, Ghana, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, India and Singapore. We did this WITHOUT BREAKOUT ROOMS and it was a joy.

 

 

Jeff Gordon, Dramatherapist, Therapeutic Clown (Israel)

The pandemic in Israel has amplified the social and economic divisions that have existed for many years. Lines have been further drawn between the ultra- religious and secular communities who have different visions as to the nature of the society. The political left and the right have each seen each other as a threat to the whole structure of the social system and the wealthy and privileged have flagrantly displayed their riches, while many are struggling to put food on the table, with unemployment reaching a historical high.
In this highly volatile situation, verging on social chaos, the elderly the physically and mentally challenged and those facing high levels of emotional anxiety both adults and children alike, find themselves increasingly physically and socially isolated. In response to this myself and the community of therapeutic clowns, here in Israel, many trained by me, have conducted whats app video calls, to connect to people in their homes who are in need of emotional support. A hotline has been set up and I have shared humanitarian clowning space ,absurd and nonsensical, joyful and loving encounters, with people of all ages. In addition I have been involved with the development of the Global Play Brigade bringing play to people across geographical borders encouraging them to give voice to their deepest concerns around the pandemic and co -creating a vision for positive social change beyond the present situation. This has involved facilitating play based sessions and working with a team to support continued development and implementation of these offerings.

 

David Kawanuka, Hope for Youth (Uganda)

Like all other communities in the country, our community too experienced a lot of challenges since the lockdown in March.
Hope For Youth- Uganda (HFYU) is a non-profit organisation founded by Mr. Peter Nsubuga, its Director, ten years ago. Our project area has a population of over 5000 Children and Youth who are largely vulnerable, destitute and socially underprivileged. The lockdown didn’t leave our community exceptional, but affected it with no food as people’s work and income were much affected.
This alarmed Hope For Youth- Uganda as one of its objectives is to provide support and community services to community members especially MOTHERS/ GUARDIANS responsible for taking care of the children. With the little support we got from friends, as our moto says, “small things with greater love “, we managed to extend it to at least 50 families of the aged grandparents whom we identified were seriously in need of food. The lockdown has affected much our programmes because of the limited movements set by the ministry of health to fight the covid-19. These affected include the community outreach programme where our Youth group, “The All Stars”, always visit villages to educate the masses on the issues identified as affecting the community wellbeing, for example, the importance of keeping proper hygiene and sanitation. They do this through music and drummer.
Countrywide, many pregnancies have been registered in school girls according to the ministry of education. We pray our female youth members are not victims. We’re now opening with our programme, Development School for the Youth (DSY) where the Youth sit once a Month guided by their administrators, to discuss ideas on issues which the organisation think need to be addressed. Now the current covid-19 situation is the issue as we need to check on how the lockdown has affected our organisation and the community at large. And then the way forward.

 

Steven Licardi, #CoupDeMot, Therapist, Poet (USA)

Nestled on Monacan and Tutelo occupied lands in the Blue Ridge Mountains of SW Virginia in the U.S., though not untouched, I have been able to work as an artist and a therapist throughout these many months. My heart-home, however, is in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY, the most diverse neighborhood in the world, which became the epicenter of the epicenter of the pandemic early on.

Within a month of the outbreak, I began offering pro bono / in-kind psychotherapy via telehealth to artists with Okay, Let’s Unpack This and the Jane Addams Collective. Further, I began working as a co-conspirator with the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA) around the need for therapists and healers to center lived-experiences and decolonize their practices.

Yes, and… At the beginning of the pandemic, I constructed hand-washing signs using scraps of poems and contributed to the collaborative arts piece Distant Bodies: Season 2, Episode 10. For National Poetry Month, I hosted a Virtual Writing Workshop with the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, responded to a writing challenge by WNYC Studios and Gothamist, and participated in a collaboration between Double Edge Theatre and WRSI – 93.9 The River. Beyond this, I have hosted several virtual performances of my project #CoupDeMot, which premiered at PPLG in 2019, including Performing the World Happenings, Science on Tap NRV, and Psychotherapy St. Louis.

In the summer, my partner – educator and theatre-maker Courtney Surmanek – and I began “Window Theatre”, incorporating theatre games, improv, clowning, poetry, and singing to cultivate relationships with the local elders, alongside co-collaborators Corinne Shelor and Dr. Ozzie Abaye.

To come full circle, my poems “Suburban Legend for White America” and “For Queens” were featured in Call & Response, a community arts project from Flushing Town Hall in Flushing, Queens, NY.

 

Uri Noy Meir, ImaginAction, Facilitator of Theatre of the Oppressed and Social Presencing Theatre (Italy, Israel)

Fortunately, the little town where we live in central Italy has not suffered any cases of Coronavirus as of yet. We have seen our local and regional projects have been slowing down and adapting to the new social distancing measures. In fact, it has been a period of pause and rewiring the creative energies and responding to many changes the global crisis is provoking.
I have been holding spaces for exchange, practice, and experiment in the various global communities of practice I am part of, seeing the crisis as an opportunity to connect and co-create across borders. I co-hosted the Joker Exchange Online Gatherings, the Unfolding the Invisible Practice group, and the Arts-based sense-making research Hub as part of the Gaia Journey, I presented and facilitated Terra-Adama-Earth performance as part of SODA festival, In-Bodied Memories interactive Video Art as part of Coming Down to Earth Conflict transformation summit and Unlocking our Dreams workshops as part of ImaginAction’s summer school and the Dragon Dreaming Confestival, I started teaching Newspaper Theatre online at FHWS University and am now co-creating learning program via the new ImaginAction platform.

 

Ilaria Olimpico, The Albero, Facilitator of Theatre and Storytelling (Italy)

Coronavirus March 2020:

Reality manifested stretching in between Blind Panic and Great Hope,

Retreating Silence and Crazy Infodemic.

In the beginning of the lockdown,

I could feel my body split in at least two parts:

the low part connected to the Earth, finally breathing;

the upper part confused, staging the worse scenario and the best scenario:

Death and authoritarian management of fear and pandemic.

Pause and wise co-creating possibilities from crisis.

I missed and keep missing wise ears, wise eyes, wise hands.

Proliferazione di esperti, pop up di complottisti e totale mancanza di Saggi

I could have time to retreat, reflect and write. Also about my work. I discovered the potential of connecting across borders without moving. During the lockdown, we connected through participative storytelling meetings online. The first group was a prototype of how we can transfer a workshop in presenceinto a meeting online keeping the warm sensation of sitting in a circle. The second group was a women circle exploring life passages weaving images, stories, body resonance and creative writing (https://thealbero.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/storie-che-riconnettono-cerchio-di-donne-ai-tempi-del-lockdown-testimonianze/). The third group was really a gift: a group of refugees and Italians. We regained our capacity of imagination, we learnt how to weave together stories welcoming the visions and the perceptions of the others. Where I can’t get with my rationality, bring me there with your imagination! (https://thealbero.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/dove-non-riesco-a-vedere-io-portamici-tu-2/) Meanwhile, the project funded by Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) was slowing down, trying to find its smart version online. And we did it. A workshop about recognizing skills and gifts for migrants.Apparently, more distant in the local community, I could connect more with the international community, through the Joker Exchange Event, through ImaginAction Summer School.

Many questions arise from these experiences: How are we combining the emerging, surprising power of connecting online across borders andthe basic need to connect in a physical way there where we are with our body and senses? How these two movements (across borders online and coming back to local and physical) can strengthen each other?How can we transfer the capacity of our body in its feature of sensing and facilitating through senses to the online dimension?

 

Eleni Tsompanaki, Professor of Dance, Community Dance Artist, University of Thessaly (Greece)

‘It was an awkward and unprecedented experience. However, instead of allowing fear and stress to enter my life, I decided to take advantage of this situation. I gave time to pause, to be creative, to meditate…. Many of my students were not in the same position. They have found it hard to cope with these changes and struggled during quarantine.
I felt that I had to help my community revive their psychology. Therefore, I utilized, during our online classes, a creative teaching method of engaging them in something creative and expressive. We composed a choreography based on the lived experiences during quarantine. They had to decode their emotions and the state they were in, and express it through movement. They used their cell phones to capture their compositions and all material were then edited by a professional, so as to created a short video dance. This procedure helped us support each other, express ourselves and release tension.’

 

Global Play Brigade

GLOBAL PLAY BRIGADE

Play it Forward. Change our World.

PPLG is honoured to endorse and partner with the Global Play Brigade!

The Global Play Brigade (GPB) is a volunteer community of play and performance activists, improvisers, clowns, musicians, educators and therapists who have come together in response to the global pandemic and the distressing, inequitable state of our world. Their aim is to bring people together across borders — to play, create, connect and grow — creating new pathways for social change.

Please join us in supporting the growth of this exciting new initiative!

 

Join the launching event of GPB on June 8th 2020 at 20:30 CEST!

https://www.globalplaybrigade.org

Sign up and register for their free online work/playshops.

Volunteer your time as well, and donate as well!

 

Like and join the Facebook page and group:

https://www.facebook.com/GlobalPlayBrigade

Follow the Global Play Brigade on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/globalplaybrigade/

PPLG 2019 – CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

We are calling for volunteers to support the production of the international conference “Play, Perform, Learn, Grow: Bridging Communities, Practices and the World”

https://pplg.org/

https://www.facebook.com/PPLGcommunity/

PPLG 2019 is taking place in Anatolia College, Thessaloniki, 4-6 October 2019, from 16.00 of Friday 4th to 21.00 of Sunday 6th.

PPLG 2019 is organized by Aristotle University, University of Thessaly, East Side Institute of New York, Epineio Institute and Lesvos Solidarity. It is produced by an international organizing team.

PPLG 2019 will host 186 presenters from 37 countries, who will give presentations, workshops, performances of their work in art, education, therapy, community organizing. We are expecting 250+ overall participants. 

 

Responsibilities and tasks of Volunteers:

  • To support presenters during the parallel sessions, each in an allocated room, making sure that the minimum and maximum numbers of participants are met.
  • To keep track of the session’s duration and remind the presenters regarding the timely presentation of their work.
  • To give technical support to the presenters, if needed (for example, files on room’s computers, projector, skype connections, etc.).
  • To give direction to participants regarding rooms, logistics, schedule at the conference venue.
  • To be a general reference for participants during the conference, recognizable as PPLG volunteers.

 

What we offer to Volunteers:

  • Free participation in the international PPLG 2019 conference, including access to all workshops, presentations and performances (check the program here: https://pplg.org/creative-program/ ).
  • Free lunches and reception dinner.
  • Volunteering and participation certificate: a personal certificate will be issued to each Volunteer by the organizers of the conference: Aristotle University, University of Thessaly, East Side Institute, Epineio Institute and Lesvos Solidarity, useful for any academic or professional use.
  • Free of charge preparation workshops: we offer to volunteers free theatre, dance and dramatherapy workshops as a form of training, during the month of September, before the production of the conference. 

 

Weekly workshops / training for Volunteers:

The theatre, dance and dramatherapy workshops for Volunteers will be hosted at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki: 4 workshops, once per week. Participation in the workshops is a requisite to be accredited as PPLG 2019 Volunteers: the schedule will be announced at the first meeting, also in conversation with the group. 

The opening welcoming/ first workshop for volunteers is taking place on Saturday 31 August 2019 18.00 – 20.00 in the open Theatre next to the Municipality of Thessaloniki:

https://goo.gl/maps/WrzycCxT8cjN3R9z9.

After that, from 20.00 to 21.00 we will offer a reception with finger food and drinks.

To apply as a Volunteer at PPLG 2019 please fill in the application form by Friday 30th of August 2019, either on this same page, or following this link:

https://forms.gle/rEyb7dyv6148fALz9

For any questions, feel free to contact us: community@pplg.org ; +30.6947815524

 

Theatre for Living Power Play with David Diamond

19-23 September + 3-6 October 2019

Thessaloniki, Greece

www.david-diamond-greece-anamuh.confetti.events

As the realities of climate change are upon us, how do we build connections with each other and not more walls? How do we recognize there is no “them”, that on this tiny blue ball, there is only “us” here?

We are inviting you to join the 6-days Power Play, led by the renowned theatre director David Diamond.

David has adapted Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed into what he now calls “Theatre for Living” approaching the work from a systems perspective: www.theatreforliving.com.

The Power Play will be created by people from diverse backgrounds and walks of life from around the world, to explore how blockages are manifesting in our lives and getting in the way of us taking collective responsibility and action, in response to Climate Change.

The Power Play will be performed as interactive Forum Theatre and it will contribute to create the international conference Play, Perform, Learn, Grow (PPLG): Bridging Communities, Practices and the World, Thessaloniki, Greece, 4-6 October 2019: www.pplg.org.

 

Organized by ANAMUH – Arts for Dialogue (www.anamuh.org)

In collaboration with:

Theatre for Living (www.theatreforliving.com)

Play, Perform, Learn, Grow (www.pplg.org)

Information and registrations:

www.david-diamond-greece-anamuh.confetti.events

For any doubts or question, don’t hesitate to contact:

Francesco Argenio Benaroio: francesco@anamuh.org