Artpolis (Art and Community Centre), organised the Online Theatre Performance Forum between mid- March and mid-April, as part of their ArtEd project “Growing through Arts in Education”. The Forum involved the participation of 88 children from 6 selected schools in the city of Prishtina, Kosovo.

They were pupils from 6 to 9 grade, who are enthusiastic about theatre with a strong willingness to learn about theatre in addition to following the curricula.

The situation created by the coronavirus dictated for Artpolis to change the work setting and adapt it online. They remodelled their entire programme by organising online rehearsals with the children. Artpolis prepared creative activities, exercises, and training which enabled the children to learn more about art, culture, human rights and multi-ethnic coexistence in Kosovo. At the end of this programme, a video drama was produced by each group.

All 88 children participated actively in theatre clubs to create a forum of theatre performances, work online, share their experiences, ideas, concerns and desires. The forum of theatre performance, refers to the process of exploring beyond yourself and understanding someone else’s world, by also conveying emotions and feelings to the audience.

Some of the themes that the children performed in were about domestic violence, bullying, discrimination of persons with special needs and others.

All 6 clubs performed live on Facebook online between 4 and 19 April. The children’s video-drama performances were viewed and followed by their peers on Artpolis social media.

The trainers, Qendresa Kajtazi, Daniela Markaj and Edlir Gashi actively supported the theatre clubs in creating online video dramas and offering theatre useful information such as acting and directing and at the same time providing essential human rights knowledge. Parents were very happy and supported their children’s participation in theatre activities and online rehearsals, a process that helped them cope with the situation of isolation more easily.

After this successful endevour, Artpolis is providing online training to the children on how to use the Canva program, which will help them in various future school projects.

ARTPOLIS is a Kosovo-based civil society organisation that promotes culture, arts and multi-ethnic co-existence through social dialogue and use of theatre as a tool for promoting diversity and social change. Its mission is to build the cultural power of women and youth to become catalysts for social change.