A Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white kaftan used her arms as a clapboard and clapped her hands to signal the start of the rehearsal. Other amateur actors, donning comical moustaches, shuffled into position, improvising a scene in which a customer's hair is accidentally dyed blue at a women's salon.
When the scene was over, the women all burst out laughing, teasing each other about how to do it better next time. It's a common scene at the Kulhena Creative Workshops, which are held in a community clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire town. The workshops are open to all local women, but with a focus on migrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.
The 90-minute classes, which Mahwa Theatre has been hosting since 2019, are a joyous space. About 15 women gather each week to tell stories, dance, act and chat. The women are provided with bus passes, a play area for their young children and an on-site health worker if they want to talk.
Eman Elsayed, an Egyptian mother of three, said she felt “depressed, isolated and fed up” with her life in Leeds before attending the workshop in 2020. But she felt her life changed, especially after joining Mahwah Theatre's Associate Artist Programme in 2021.
“Art is a magic wand,” said Elsayed, who now has a paid job doing community service with the program, “but you have to believe in it and you have to take the time to see what it brings.”
Mafuwa's project is just one example of a larger trend: a growing number of groups and individuals around the world are using the arts to empower, unite, and even heal people traumatized by war, natural disasters, or discrimination, poverty, and displacement.
The idea of healing through art is the overarching theme of this year's “Art for Tomorrow” conference, an annual event hosted by the Foundation for Democracy & Culture and featuring panels moderated by New York Times journalists.
At this year's event, taking place in Venice this week, a panel called “Arts as the Ultimate Mediator” will explore how people and groups are using the arts in local and international development and peacebuilding programs.
“What I have observed is that art allows you to create spaces of truth,” said conference panelist Adama Sanneh, co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, which, through its Creativity Pioneers Fund, gives grants to small, community-based programs that use art to inspire social change, including Mafuwa, which received a grant last year.
“It's neutral, there's a space for the personal before the public and the political,” Sanne said. “If we can create that environment, even for a moment, things can really happen.”
Creative people have long understood the power of the arts to teach critical thinking and give people agency. “Communities around the world have long recognized the power of the arts to create positive social change,” says Toni Shapiro-Fim, director of the Peacebuilding and the Arts Program at Brandeis University.
For example, more than a century ago in what is now Myanmar, stories told through traditional puppet shows “were sometimes the only stories that mocked authority and offered an alternative way of imagining what was possible, how we could be good people in the world,” she said. Around the same time in Russia, artists like Marc Chagall taught art to Jewish orphans to help them overcome trauma.
“In the creative space, there's an encounter with oneself, an awakening to one's unconscious and experience,” says filmmaker Tammy Federman, whose new documentary “Memory Game” focuses on an Israeli theater troupe of Holocaust survivors run by the Israeli social services organization AMCHA. “But there's also an encounter between groups, because one person is telling this very traumatic experience and the other person can relate to that. There's the courage to open up and share one's experience, and there's also joy and humor and movement and creativity.”
Research from Brandeis University and IMPACT, the nonprofit that spun out of Brandeis' work, has found that the creative sector's work to address difficult challenges is “poorly understood, under-resourced and under-funded,” but there is a growing understanding that through the arts, individuals and communities (including “oppressed” people) can make their voices heard.
Realizing this, mainstream institutions and donor countries are beginning to take the arts seriously as a “viable soft power” peacebuilding tool, according to visual sociologist Tiffany Fairley of the School of War Studies at King's College London. “A major criticism of the liberal peace is the fact that it ignores those directly affected by conflict, that the communities themselves have no say in peacebuilding policies and programs,” Fairley said. Now, Fairley said, “people are turning to the arts as a force for engaging communities.”
Israeli theatre therapist Ronen Berger, also a panelist in Venice, said one of the reasons the arts are so effective in addressing collective trauma is because creative practices such as dance, storytelling and song reach back to childhood.
“As babies, we begin to communicate with the world through play, through voice, through song, through rocking – through dance,” he says, “so this way of doing things is very primal and very universal.”
Berger said that when he was working with large groups, the easiest way to connect was through rhythm, such as clapping. “It overcomes language, cultural and age barriers,” he said, adding that performances are important not only because they raise awareness of the issues, but also because participants feel seen and part of a larger community. “It helps us get to know each other and feel like we're doing something together.”
This idea of connecting simple things to a central focus led Michael Lessack to found the Global Arts Corps, which has produced theatre in post-conflict places like Northern Ireland, the Balkans and Cambodia, beginning with the play Truth in Translation, which premiered in Kigali, Rwanda in 2006, telling the story of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission through the eyes of a translator.
The play has toured post-conflict areas, sparking widespread dialogue and debate. “We had people in rehearsals who said, 'I don't think I can be a part of your project because I don't believe in forgiveness,'” said Mr. Lessac, whose TV directorial credits include “Taxi,” “Newhart” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
“We weren't talking about forgiveness then. I said, 'I don't want you to believe it, I want you to rehearse it.'” Lessac said he often asks actors to act out emotions opposite to the ones they're feeling.
“So if it's hate, you play love and you jump to the other side and you absorb a lot,” he said. “In that sense, you go through a process that you would never go through if you had three lawyers and an oppressor in the way.”
The arts can also draw attention to issues: No Direction Home, a London-based programme that provides stand-up comedy workshops and gigs for people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, has presented shows that have entertained audiences of thousands.
Almir Korzic, director and co-founder of Counterpoints, which organises both No Direction Home and Refugee Week in the UK, said the arts have the power to “improve our well-being, aid mental health and enable people to use their creativity to cope with loss”.
“On a broader level, the arts have great potential to open up spaces of connection and encourage people to develop empathy,” he said.