Image courtesy of S.A.F.E. Kenya

Resilience project brings Kenyans to Cornwall

The ESI is looking forward to welcoming to the Penryn Campus seven members of a Kenyan-based theatre company who are part of a research project examining community responses to extreme weather and climate change in Kenyan’s coastal communities.

The Kenyan production shows the effects on three village friends (and on their families and livelihoods) of environmental change and extreme weather.  The engaging, funny and positive 45-minute play examines the opportunities and challenges which their growing children face in trying to develop sustainable and resilient futures.

The theatre company, S.A.F.E. Kenya, has a long and successful track record of using forum theatre techniques to explore issues such as HIV, water quality and sanitation. This project, however, with its emphasis on community resilience to environmental change, encompasses many of the  issues previously explored separately: resilience being a concept which simultaneously links and transcends environmental and social change.

The Kenyan element of the work is, effectively, one half of the project, whose other half will see how the same issues affect Cornwall’s coastal communities, especially in light of the severe storms of 2013 and 2014.

When members of S.A.F.E. Kenya visit Cornwall this autumn, they will not only take part in activities on the Penryn Campus; their visit is also timed to coincide with the launch of the Cornish production which, at the time of writing, seems likely to take place in Porthleven at the end of September.  This will be devised and mounted by creative partner Goldentree Productions CIC, under the leadership of Natalia Eernstman, and will build on Natalia’s work from earlier this year, called StormSongs.

The project with S.A.F.E. Kenya  began in April 2014, it is led by Professor Katrina Brown with the assistance of Alex Huke and is sponsored by AXA. You can read much more, watch videos and keep up to date with blogs on the ‘You, me and our resilience’ section in our Research pages.

Date: 13 July 2015