Empowerment is the ground work to effective
advocacy
We have been working
with a NGO in Henan that advocate and work to improve rural equality for women
and the people in general. Our previous
projects since 2007 have used art, embroidery and drama for sex education,
women issues of marriage, birth right and inheritance which received much
participation and positive feedback from a wide range of people.
To involve more
artists in this project, and due to scheduling conflict, this recent July 2012
trip consisted of 6 artists new to the project, covering painting, music and
drama. Whereas previous programmes
engaged women in similar social circumstances, facing issues that were closely
intertwined, this trip required us to work with 3 new groups: a children
musical drama, a community mural and an elderly choir. As this was a new audience with new
objectives, the facilitation style and method became a central point of
discussion and some tension (this discussion will omit the community mural that
involved all ages). Albeit differences
in expectations and opinions, the parties were willing to listen and exchange
ideas.
The process has
stimulated me to think about issues of advocacy and empowerment. To provide a frame for discussion, advocacy
work is described as usually being issue-based, is more urgent and direct, and
is more vocal; such as improving female access to education. While empowerment work is described here as
usually being long-term, tackling fundamental issues, it tries to exercise or
actualize rather than simply vocalize the intended change, but that change is
often hard to concretize or to observe; such as reshaping a community’s
expectation of female.
Children Musical Drama
The expectation of the
NGO was to express children rights; especially that disciplinary beating is not
okay. Since this was a 1st
trip, our basic knowledge was that i) all Chinese children are ‘enslaved’ under
the education system and ii) that the parents work hard to make a living and
are also stressed out about children’s school performance. Within the time frame, our plan was to a) let
everyone have fun and participate well in the drama and b) through the quality
participation to improve children-parent relationship.
This was exercising children’s right to fun
and expression, something we value as the most basic children rights, and
through that to open the parents’ eye to the children holistic growth, thus lowering
physical discipline either due to bad school marks or repressed temper.
After the first day, the
NGO’s commented that it was too indirect and wished for clearer portrayal and
exploration of physical discipline in the drama. We agree that should be a long term goal, but
too rushed for the 10 allotted workshop hours.
So we inserted a scene of physical discipline, and created a song with
each child’s response to being hit.
There was not enough time to explore the parents’ side. However, one incident suggested to us that
the parents were beginning to really listen to the children: During the final
day of rehearsal, we scheduled an actors’ meeting that included both children
and adult actors. While the children
were giving their comments, not only were the adults listening, they even
accepted and put into practice some of the children’s suggestions.
Elderly Choir
With many adults and
youths moving to work in the cities, many elderlies stay in the rural homes to
farm and take care of grandchildren, while out of disrespect families may show physical
neglect or even violence to them. Also,
the changing society and deteriorating communal life has completely taken away
many elderlies’ neighbourhood and friends, causing low self-esteem, loneliness
and high number of suspected depression cases.
The NGO wanted to start an elderly choir that would bring them together
to rebuild communal life, to rebuild their self-esteem and respect from the
community.
As we saw it, in order
to bring people together, we would want to first build friendship and a trusting
environment for them to share stories and emotions of everyday lives. Since it was the breakdown of family we were
fighting against, we began with topics such as taking care of grandchildren and
families, using children folk tunes that would evoke such memories.
Again after the first
day, the NGO commented that they wanted establish the group by first building
respect for the elderlies from the community, by presenting an image of the
elderlies being still energetic.
Therefore, singing children folk tunes was too ‘childish’, and might
cause further disrespect. After our
artists warmed up the elderlies, they insisted simply preparing 2 songs for
performance. We originally envisioned an
intimate performance of traditional and newly composed folk tunes that share
about life’s up and down; however, the final performance was yet another
conventional performance that mirrored that village’s other larger choir.
Reflections
From the perspective
of a participating party, the mural and children choir actually went pretty
well. I think the success was not only
an artistic success, but also a successful negotiation of objective and
method. Conversely, the elderly choir’s
performance was in part my failure to successfully find a suitable middle
ground. It is frustrating but not
uncommon for partnering NGO to suggest or interfere with the programme, but it
is always unfortunate that NGO pay artists to do what they can do themselves.
As the visiting
artists, it is reasonable for us to respect the local NGO’s assessment of a
community’s culture and needs. It was
their belief that elderly wellbeing was an urgent issue that required a clear
example for advocacy, and as such an elderly choir was required. But as mentioned above, the performance of
the choir was simply a small version of the village choir that belted out
powerful revolutionary songs. Thinking
back to the elderly choir, there is even the danger that, by upholding a facade
of strength and capableness, the public would feel that the elderlies are doing
fine socially, physically and mentally.
I agree that advocacy
is required to raise awareness and action, however, the message should be a
genuine message from the heart of the community and presented in a way that
would attract a desirable response. We
might simply say that the elderlies need love and respect. But what does that really mean and how does
it happen in their village and their family?
The artists or the local NGO can try different answers, but why not give
the elderlies the artistic tool and expressive platform to explore the answer
for themselves? The setting of a
conventional choir provides very limited participation, whereas small group
compositions and rehearsal can better share ideas and skills. The creative
process alone already builds mutual respect and connection. And ultimately, through
this empowerment process, the envisioned future for advocacy will slowly
materialize.
