BREAKING GROUND

Breaking Ground Project

New Australian Theatre Initiative for Refugees and Migrant Youth

Breaking Ground is a performing arts training program led by JUTE Theatre Company in partnership with Centacare and Cairns African Association with a big picture aim to establish a New Australian Theatre Troupe and as short term objective teaching transferrable skills through theatre-based activities.

The two-week program, especially created for Cairns African Community youth, including refugees and migrants, ran from November 28th until December 9th and gave 10 participants, selected in an audition process, the opportunity to develop their own theatre work as well as develop new skills and build confidence.

Project participants

African-Australian migrant/refugees aged 16-25

For this pilot program 10 were selected from auditions to participate in a program of weekly workshops and training. They were also engaged in the capacity of consultants so that the product of the pilot program and the basis of future programs is influenced and shaped by their input.

To join the ensemble, participants participated in an audition and interview process (November 5th). This took the form of a 2-hour workshop in which the applicants work together in a group environment and are observed in action by the facilitator, JUTE and Centacare. After the audition JUTE and Centacare made the selection of 10 youths to join the program.

Projected outcomes

1. Develop Growth Mindset: Through the arts, students develop resilience, grit, and a growth mindset to help them master their craft, do well academically, and succeed in life after school. By setting clear expectations and goals for students and then drawing the correlation between the work done and the results, students can begin to shift their motivation, resulting in a much healthier and more sustainable learning environment.

2. Develop Self-Confidence: Confidence gained from arts programs, and their capacity to support healthy risk taking improves academic outcomes and student behaviour.

3. Develop Improved Cognition: By immersing students in arts education, they can be drawn into an incredibly complex and multifaceted endeavour that combines many subjects: mathematics, history, language, and science, while being uniquely tied to culture.

4. Improve Communication Skills: It can be argued that communication may be the single most important aspect of existence. Students learn a multitude of communication skills by studying the arts.

5. Deepen Cultural and Self-Understanding: Art is at the very core of our identity as humans. Consequently, the greatest gift we can give students is an understanding, appreciation, and ability to create art and share it with the broader community.

FACILITATOR / DIRECTOR: GRACE EDWARD

Grace is a Logan based Playwright, Director, and Creative Producer from Yei, South Sudan. Grace fell in love with the power of storytelling as a child and was able to nurture that raw passion into a craft through the years.

Through her Bachelor of Arts in Contemporary and Applied Theatre, Grace was able to find a medium of storytelling that made space for community advocacy and development; a tool to understand one another better.

As a storyteller, Grace explores different aspects of what it means to be a third-culture child and a person of colour, living on stolen land. Grace has co-written, produced, and directed four theatre productions in Brisbane with The Big Reach project (2022) being the most recent piece of work.

Grace also completed a Master of Creative Industries, Creative Production and Art Management and co-founded the Youth CALD Disability Collective.