Community Theatre
for Diet Change
Theatre for diet change is a public mass campaign
collaborative initiative that seeks to raise awareness, promote and introduce
the plant based diet lifestyle among mainstream communities and community
theatre artists around Zimbabwe. It is a project that seeks to educate firstly
the community based theatre groups and other creative who in turn will leverage
their platform in amplifying the plant based diet message through community
engagement performances and exhibitions.
In this pilot initiative, The VegHub Zimbabwe worked in the
City of Bulawayo with Two community based theatre groups. The groups were
trained in conducting vegan advocacy plays using the community theatre process
model. The training was done over 6 days through an in-person interactive creative
workshop at the Youth centre in Mpopoma.
The Artists created 25 minutes long plays during the training based on
the content/evidence and compiled research data on the benefits of plant based
diet, alternative proteins and sustainable food systems gathered during the
workshops. After the plays were created, the trained community based artists rehearsed
the plays for 2 weeks before conducting community engagement performance in
institutions (Schools and youth centres), and public spaces. Each group conducted
3 outreach meetings. Presentations included the performance of the play by the
groups and dialogue with the audience on issues emanating from the
presentations.
Plant based diet and sustainable food systems advocacy work is developing in Zimbabwe and needs a robust spur in order to accelerate its growth. We are grateful to Thrive Philanthropy for supporting this initiative with seed grant.
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