Acting for Sustainability
On Thursday, 23 April 2015, we performed at the annual party of the staff of the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources of the University Freiburg. The faculty supports us – since the formation of our group – by allowing us to use the rooms of the Herderbau for our rehealsals and workshops.
Invited by the netzwerk n we performed on Friday, 10th October 2014 at the “konferenz n -Hochschule weiter denken” in Bochum. The conference asked how education and research for sustainable development should be designed and what part students play in this process. The organisers invited students and university officials that are promoting a sustainable university – especially members of student initiatives.
The Freiburg Scientific Theatre opened the event with a tailored performance on sustainability issues in universities, facilitated various exercises and the development of standing pictures by the conference participants. In addition, we close the conference with a second performance on changing systems to be more sustainable. Pictures of our performance as well as the facilitation of theatre exercises are below.
On Saturday, 12th July 2014 we performed at the final event of the “Freiburger Aktionstage Nachhaltigkeit” in Bürgerhaus Zähringen. At the event organized by the Freiburg city council we presented three of our scenes on consumer’s resposibility in German.
In addition to a Scientific Theatre Workshop, we presented various scenes on the “Cost of Food” at the Wirkcamp 2014 in Freiburg on 1st May. The event was organized by an initiative called “Synagieren – Initiative für Gemeinsames Handeln” and more than 160 students & practitioners from all around Germany participated. The performance was videotaped and we are currently working on the editing. The scenes developed by the participants of the Scientific Theatre Workshop are published on the Wirkcamp’s website within the next weeks.
In case you are interested in your own Scientific Theatre Workshop facilitated by our team, please read more about our workshops and our approach or contact us.
Last week we presented our new scenes on the cost of food at the 2014 Freiburg Forum on Environmental Governance organized by the eights generation of the Master of Environmental Governance students. The event titled “The Cost of Food – Beyond the Price Tag” involved various creative workshops on scienece slam, infographics, theatre and visual arts, followed by a public panel discussion. In addition, the students launched the Freiburg Urban Agriculture guide and a Smartphone App.
Mid-October we organized a Scientific Theatre Tour to the Baltic Sea. In Greifswald we performed as part of the alumni conference “Conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems” on 12th October and for a wider public in the student organized theatre on 14th October. In between Sadhbh, Andrea, Jade and Torben facilitated a 5-hour workshop for the Ökohaus e.V. Rostock and the team showed potpourri of various scenes as evening event at the Peter-Weiss-Haus in Rostock. Despite the tight schedule we couldn’t forego a bath in the Baltic Sea.
Invited by the Youth Future Project and the Center for Development Research (ZEF) we performed at the Youth Future Conference 2013 in Bonn. The Freiburg Scientific Theatre showed the new play “A Bachata in Fukushima“, which deals with the theme of energy transition. It includes scenes on fracking, nuclear energy, feed-in tariffs, green jobs and power relations in the energy sector.
On 14th August we presented our new play “A Bachata in Fukushima” at the BRIGHT Students’ Conference 2013“Energy Transition in the 21st Century”. The BRIGHT Students’ Conference is an annual gathering of students from member universities of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). The conference aims to provide an environment in which excellent students can focus on themes crucial to their education and cultural development, as field specialists and stakeholders of the Europe of tomorrow. The conference offers the participants a platform on which they can discuss politically, socially and intellectually challenging topics that are shaping our present and future.
On the 22nd June our show “A Compass to Sustainability” was the final event of the Freiburg Sustainability Week. The week with various events on living sustainably in Freiburg was organized by the city council and open to the public. About 180 people watched our performance, including the major of Freiburg (Dr. Dieter Salomon) and the dean of the faculty of environment and natural resources of Freiburg’s university (Prof. Barbara Koch).
In order to fit the thematic contents of the event we adapted various of our scenes and developed new ones on the concept of the “sustainability compass“. In addition we translated some of our scenes to German.
In June 2013 we were invited to perform at the opening of the Marburger Bildungsfest. The Bildungfest takes place in tepees directly by the riverside in Marburg. Topics of the annual 4-day festival are education, sustainability, equity and political action. We enjoyed the unique experience of performing in a circus tent and were grateful for the great opportunity to play in Marburg.