Creative Hands: Schools Programme

In the period 2009-2011, COL focused on environmental education, with a specific focus on unpacking and exploring the issue of water in 2010-2011. Along with building awareness about environmental issues, the project was designed so that learners, mentors, volunteers, and other stakeholders were able to develop collaboration skills and creativity, as well as encourage a culture of ongoing shared learning.

During the initial phase of a production, a series of workshops is conducted to prepare the core project team and stakeholders for work with learners. The workshop content includes design and construction of puppets as a mechanism for storytelling, as well as input from subject experts about future thinking, environmental education, youth, facilitation techniques, and improvisation as a tool for creative expression and storytelling.

The resulting production is designed to be a highly mobile, no-tech, short-form communication mechanism that uses theatre and puppetry to engage stakeholders and deliver messaging about the environment. This production is available as a commercial product to stakeholders in the corporate and public sector, but is provided to learners at no cost to the school or parents. Learner recall mechanisms like stickers and posters are distributed to learners.

From 2010-2011, the COL Task Team worked with 2 identified schools based in the city of Cape Town. One school serves learners from an economically stable, middle-class to affluent community, and one school serves learners from previously disadvantaged communities. In addition to holding performances at the schools, COL has worked to address the need for integration through shared learning opportunities using virtual and physical platforms for storytelling. Stories are captured and shared through videography, photography, the written and spoken word, and - insofar as is possible - the learner’s choice of creative mediums is accommodated.

The puppetry-based theatre production delivers messaging to learners at all levels within the school, and the task team works intensively with Grade 7 learners (aged 13-14) through puppetry and theatre-based facilitated workshops. Grade 7 learners work towards a production delivered at the end of the programme which is hosted by one of the participating schools. Grade 7 learners are also incentivised to lobby for the nomination of a boy or girl to represent their school and community at the COL camp. The criteria for election is established through up-front collaboration with key stakeholders and is clearly communicated to learners so that they can lobby effectively.

In 2012, Puppetry South Africa launched the Creative Hands project, a programme birthed from the work that had gone into COL over the previous years. Creative Hands has similar goals to COL, but has broadened its scope to include tertiary institutions as well as differently-abled learners. A core Creative Hands strategy is facilitating exchange between professional performers and theoreticians, as well as between tertiary students and school-attending learners. "All learning from each other, the participants discover new avenues of expression and creativity through this mutually beneficial process."

Environment and Youth

Puppetry South Africa (formerly called the Union International de la Marionette (UNIMA) South Africa (UNIMA SA), also known as the the South African Association of Puppetry and Visual Performance) was established in 1972 and works to develop South African puppetry through the development of local skills and encouraging the exposure of South African puppeteers to international trends. Puppetry SA is part of the international body UNIMA, first established in 1929 by the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).