Kickstarter Empowerment

Kickstarter Educational Empowerment is a highly acclaimed and awarded arts-education programme run by ASSITEJ South Africa to support teachers to be able to deliver quality Creative Arts in schools.

History

The programme targets teachers and community-based artist facilitators to build capacity in delivering the formal Creative Arts curriculum at Intermediate Phase. It uses an experiential, easily accessible, step-by-step methodology, which has been tried and tested with teachers as the Creative Voices methodology since 2000. The programme is generously funded by Rand Merchant Bank. The pilot ran in 2015-2016, where we worked with 57 teachers of Creative Arts in 20 schools in Free-State and Kwazulu Natal, to assist them to deliver on the compulsory Creative arts curriculum, benefitting thousands of children. We also measured the impact of Creative Arts (drama, dance, music and visual arts) on all aspects of learning and teaching. Kickstarter is now working in Free State, KwaZulu Natal and Northern Cape, with some workshops taking place in Gauteng. The programme is being upscaled for further roll-outs across the country.

Initiatives

The programme includes a number of initiatives. These include:

After School Game Changer: Artist facilitator training

Surviving as an artist can be difficult, so being able to facilitate within the in-school or after-school environment is a great plus. Kickstarter Empowerment runs forums, workshops, training and development opportunities for artists and educators who want to work in this space. Since 2014, they have trained intensively around 250 artist-facilitators from 6 provinces to work in schools.Currently, their After-School Game Changer training programme in association with the Department of Cultural Affairs & Sports, Western Cape, is assisting over 60 Creative Arts coaches a year to provide excellent afterschool programmes for children and young people across the province. They have been running the programme since 2017, and have created community-based and provincial Showcases for the coaches to demonstrate talent and skills of their learners.

Theatre Mediation

Theatre can be made even more powerfully transformative if the experience is extended in some way through pre- or post-show workshops. Theatre mediation helps children and young people to fully engage with the material of the play, and to experiment with the theatre languages they have been exposed to. In 2014, Kickstarter Empowerment reached 5000 school children through the innovative, award-winning War Horse Education project, sponsored by RMB, in partnership with Handspring Puppet Company, ensuring in-depth arts workshops in schools, development of educational materials and free attendance of the War Horse production. Other theatre mediation projects designed especially for theatre companies, the Baxter Theatre, the Market Theatre and others, include: The Ogreling, Lion Boy, Woza Albert, Mies Julie, Karoo Moose, Mother to Mother, and The Crossing.

For more information

For more information, see ASSITEJ South Africa.

Sources

https://assitej.org.za/our-pillars/empower-education/

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