The 9th IDEA World Congress under the slogan DRAMA 4ALL. Drama for tall and small. Celebrating drama in a changing world will be held in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, on the 4th – 8th of July 2022.  We welcome all drama/theatre educators, cultural workers, theatre artists, researchers, teachers and students from all over the world to this common arena for inspiration and development. It is hosted by FLISS (The Icelandic Drama in Education Association) and the University of Iceland, School of Education (UI). 

It is an honor for FLÍSS and UI to have the opportunity of hosting an international congress of that size on the subject of drama/theatre and education in collaboration with IDEA. Iceland is one of the leading countries when it comes to implementing drama in compulsory education. In 2013 drama was established as a key learning area in the arts in Icelandic basic education and is, in the curriculum, presented both as a subject and as a method in teaching other subjects.

By hosting the congress FLISS and the UI aim to celebrate drama as a subject in its own right in compulsory education as part of the curriculum

Registration began on 3rd January and is going well. The situation with Covid is starting to improve and we are now looking forward to brighter times.

The deadline for early-bird registration is on the 3rd of April. The deadline for paper and workshop proposals was on the 15th of January.

Many interesting proposals were sent, and the directors of projects have started to plan further the academic program. The deadline for applications for the Solidarity Fund was on the 1st of February when those who are in need had the chance to apply.

Venues for the Congress opening ceremony and performances have been secured and it is a pleasure to announce that the opening ceremony will be held in the Reykjavík City Theatre, and for those interested in social gatherings, the Congress club will be in the basement of The National Theatre.

The Congress committee looks forward to the summer. 

You can find more detailed information regarding the Congress on the 9th IDEA World Congress website: https://ideaiceland.com/  

Also, the Instagram page of the Congress is now up and we invite you to follow it and share it: https://www.instagram.com/dramaiceland2022/ 

We are looking for participants for the next young IDEA Lab in Iceland between June 24 and July 4th, 2022! The participants can be young theater educators, theater makers and practitioners, or students in those fields aged between 20 and 32 years old, that are interested in taking part in a cross-cultural exchange with other young professionals on the topic of Theater for all! 

The Lab 2022 will be a place to meet, work and learn from each other, while artistically researching the topic of “Theater for all: “Reclaiming our physical body: How can we make theater for all possible in times of a crisis?”

The participants will explore cross-cultural theater practices through peer-to-peer workshops, will artistically research the topic of the conference and create a performance of the generated artistic material.

If you are interested in participating, you can find more information here and apply by filling out the following form.  The deadline for applications is 25th February. 

Save the date!

Theatre Education to Stop Ecocide and Start Good Living!

Theatre education in schools and communities enables us, students and teachers, to create, produce and perform the futures we envision. Can we each act, together, on time, to save our world?  

This series of three webinars places performance at the heart of South-North dialogues to achieve three aims in times of ecocide and climate collapse:

• To view an Amazon-German students-theatre project collaboration as an example, to see how we might work in the space between Ecocide and Good Living.

• To view a Global project collaboration and six communities in crisis to see how students' theatre projects in schools might act globally in our local place, between Ecocide and Good Living.  

• To identify diverse strategies and develop plans for theatre education for Good Living through collaborative projects in and between different regions across the world.

Young Brazilian dancers of the group "AfroRaiz" in Germany 2019  -  ABRA and BVTS in collaboration

Webinar 1-    Saturday, April  9^th, 2022, 14 CET

Context and Example of Global South-North Collaborative Projects

Webinar 2 - Saturday, May  7th

Webinar 3 - Saturday, June 4th

To mark the 30 years of IDEA, every last Saturday of the month in 2022 an online event is taking place, organized by the IDEA Online Working Group led by Sanja Krsmanovic Tasic and by the IDEA 30 Years Anniversary Working Group, led by Tom Willems, IDEA Director of Projects and Concepts.. The event consists of the presentation of significant figures that have formed and built IDEA as a worldwide association, through an encounter and dialogue with younger IDEA members from over the world. The event has the purpose of tracing IDEA’s 30 years journey through the form of oral history and through building a bridge between generations, the featured members presenting IDEA’s past, present and future. 

A screenshot from Miao Bin’s presentation at the January THE (HI)STORY OF IDEA event

The first session took place on 29th January at noon UTC as an intergenerational and intercultural dialogue between Maria van Bakelen (Netherlands/France), the Honorary President of IDEA and IDEA President from 1992-1998, and Miao Bin (China), Drama Teacher & Head of Art Education of Tianfu No.7 High School Primary Section, Chengdu, China. The session host and moderator was Sanja Krsmanović Tasić, IDEA President, while the technical host was Borisav Matić, IDEA Administrator. 

Adriana Nichting’s drawing of the first (HI)STORY OF IDEA session 

You can watch the recording of the event at the following link. 

Stay tuned for more THE (HI)STORY OF IDEA events that will happen every month. There will be more information soon about near future sessions.

Using qualitative research platforms for theatre education research - generating and representing data 

This workshop, held online via Zoom, had an aim of demonstrating how researchers can utilize technology to organize, visualize and represent data. Peter Duffy shared the process for using a program called MAXQDA to organize coded data into themes, and then transform those themes into scenes for his play based on teacher interviews. There are a variety of digital qualitative platforms that can be used such as NVIVO, Dedoose, Quirkos, Atlas.ti, WebQDA, and many others. The general research and representation principles are similar across platforms, but for the purposes of this workshop, only the MAXQDA platform was used. By the end of the workshop, more than 30 participants from all across the world became familiar with the basic notion of coding, organizing data into themes, and starting to think about how to shape themes into theatrical scenes. 

Screenshot from the Webinar with Peter Duffy 

The African Theatre Webinar series, organized by Dr. Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare and Prof. Marion Küster, continued in November 2021, with a holiday break in December, and in the new year of 2022. The series has aims to share concepts of African drama and theatre globally, to establish closer contacts and professional relationships among drama/theatre and education practitioners in Africa with the rest of the world, to contribute towards efforts to mainstream Africa into world debates and agendas and to contribute towards decolonization and liberation of Africa from perpetual dependency on the West for cultural values and identities. 

Screenshot from the African Theatre Webinar

The participants of the November edition of the Webinar had a chance to learn about drama/theatre in Tanzanian primary education with Daines Nicodem Sanga, Senior Lecturer from the Department of Creative Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam. The topic of the January edition was creating  professional communities of practice through arts/theatre associations; featuring guests wereDr. Chriistiana Deliewen Afrikaner, the President of Africa Arts Association – AfrAA, and Mclaudy Muyuni Munanzwa, the Founder of Mclaudy Creations, Zambia. 

Next year our Association will celebrate thirty years of its existence, since it was founded in Porto, Portugal in 1992. The 30 Years IDEA working group is closely collaborating with past and immediate Elected Officers in conceptualizing the year-round events that will happen in 2022 and that will celebrate IDEA through intergenerational, intercultural and critical dialogue. The dialogue and reflection on IDEA will take place in at least two forms: 1. Verbal transgenerational interviews between IDEA members, regarding IDEA’s past, present and future; and 2. Printed publication written by a group of authors. 

The first activities will start in January, culminating during the IDEA Congress in July and will continue until the end of 2022. 

Let us celebrate IDEA together! 

IDEA 30 years logo design: Anastasia Tasić

The organizers of the AFRICAN THEATRE WEBINAR, Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare and Marion Küster are wishing us a Happy New Year!

Dear participants,

We would like to send you our warmest greetings at the end of the year 2021. We wish you all, our participants, a good end of the year. We are very happy that you continuously followed our offers with interest and commitment. Above all, we thank all our colleagues who, through their active contribution and presentations, brought us closer to the theatrical events of their countries through lectures, stimulating discussions, films, pictures, dances and songs. We would also like to thank them for the insights and exchanges we were able to experience on the subject of theatre and education with children and young people.

We have gained the impression that the webinars have created a bit more connection between all of us and we very much hope that we can continue to develop and strengthen this feeling of togetherness and mutual exchange in the coming year. We are very happy and always curious to be in touch with all of you.

To all those who are celebrating Christmas, we wish you happy holidays. We hope that all of you will be able to celebrate the end of the year in good health, with family, friends and loved ones, and take good stock of the work done, education, events and experiences.

It was not an easy year worldwide. All the more we need friendship, love, hope and mutual respect and dignity for our actions.

In this sense, we look forward to seeing you again in January. Until then, greetings and thank you for this wonderful digital community that we have been able to develop together.

With a good hug,

Mercy and Marion
Kampala/Rostock 

Happy New Year from IDEA! 

IDEA wishes everyone a happy, joyful and peaceful holiday season ahead. We wish all of us safety for the new year of 2022 and let's sincerely hope that this will be the year when we'll all get out of the pandemic crisis, step by step, through acts of solidarity. 

Let's continue to cherish drama/theatre education in 2022 and let's all continue the great work we are doing in this field in all parts of the world. 

IDEA is working really hard so we could meet in July next year at the IDEA World Congress in Reykjavik, Iceland. We hope that a large number of you will be able to meet us there. (For more information about the Congress, visit: https://ideaiceland.com/) 

2022 will also be a year when our Association will celebrate 30 years of its existence. We will commemorate this special event by organizing intergenerational and intercultural monthly dialogues between past and immediate Elected Officers and new, young members of IDEA. A print publication will also be created for this occasion. Stay tuned!

Thank you for staying with us and for making the world a better place through drama/theatre education. 

Happy New Year!

Celebrating IDEA Day 

27th November 2021

Happy IDEA Day 2021 from Elected Officers! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpTbRChKqjg   

IDEA Members Celebrating IDEA Day 2021 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9PWpWfKl0A   

IDEA Day Message from President Sanja Krsmanović Tasić 

I want to address this IDEA Day Message to all those around the world believing that art education can change a person's life for the better.

To all those who feel alone in these hard pandemic times, knowing that our art belongs to live performative art.

To drama teachers who feel that real work, face to face with children, youth, adults, elderly is endangered.

To all those who fight from day to day for their right to teach drama and theatre in schools, in classrooms, in cultural spaces, on the fields and in courtyards.

To children who have learned from an early age to express, analyze, synthesize through the language of drama, understanding how beneficial it is for them.

To children and all who have not had that privilege and chance, but hopefully will.

To parents and guardians who patiently and with love bring children to drama classes, support and watch them develop and learn humanity through our noble form.

Also to all those thinking there are more important things than drama/theatre and art education in this world in turmoil. Who see no hope and only darkness.

Next year our IDEA association is celebrating 30 years since it was formed. We shall celebrate this important milestone together in July at the IDEA Congress in Iceland. 

On the 25th Anniversary celebration in Evora, Portugal, Jovana Mihić from Serbia, a nineteen-year-old participant of the Young IDEA project that was part of the celebration, wrote and performed a story, that Maria van Bakelen also cited in her speech on that occasion.

The story is of a little boy who was the only one able to climb a very high tree in his village. When they asked him in wonder how did he do it, he answered: “I did not look up, I did not look down. My eyes were straight.” I share with you Jovana’s story.

I wish you all to keep climbing your tree, keep working, day by day, moment by moment, being aware of how important our mission is in this world. Let us not be stuck in the past, or too worried about the future. Let us be alive, giving our best to every moment.

Let us bring happiness and sense to the world through drama theatre education.

Let us celebrate IDEA Day 2021!

Sanja Krsmanović Tasić

IDEA president 

From Here to the Sky

By Jovana Mihić

There is a story about the tree with branches that had grown up to the sky. 

They were touching the clouds and it was a miracle. 

Everyone wanted to climb to the top of the tree and to feel the softness of the clouds. Many of them had injuries because of that adventure, but one boy made it. 

He said it was the happiest moment in his life. Maybe it is because he made his wish come true only by his efforts. Maybe it is because he did something that nobody had done before. 

People from his town were so jealous. They were saying: "We couldn’t understand how can a little boy do such a great thing.“ 

There was a woman who was fascinated by this boy, and she asked him, without any jealousy in her voice: "How did you make it?“ 

And the answer was simple: 

"I didn’t look down, I didn’t look up, my eyes were straight. My look was focused on the presence, on that very moment. I didn’t care what have I been through nor what is waiting for me, I was just trying to be the best I can in presence. And like that, I was changing the future and remaking the past.“

The woman told him that she wished she had his focused look, his eyes.