Community Theatre for Diet Change initiative

 

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.