International Women’s Day is this week (8th March) and I’ll be marking the day in a subterranean room in The Royal Festival Hall (RFH). From the 8th and across the whole weekend (Women of the World), a celebratory festival of events, talks, drama and music.
As someone with close links to WOW I’ll be at the heart of the RFH to lead the final day of a creativity and production workshop called Ignite for 主播大秀 Media Action colleagues. Thanks to our partnership with the Southbank Centre we are able to combine a learning workshop for 主播大秀 Media Action team-mates with the opportunity for them to then participate in some of the public presentation slots called WOW Bites.
Ignite and WOW offer an inspiring opportunity for some of the 主播大秀 Media Action team – dramatists, producers, writers and production staff – to come to London and share insight and experience. The critical role of women and girls in helping their communities reach development goals is well-acknowledged, and this opportunity provides a space where creative professionals can share knowledge, ideas and solutions about ways to use media and communication to help transform lives.
We’ll hear reflect on her role as a dramatist in Angola and her work to represent women’s voices; , who stars in one of the My Media Action films, will share more about her work on maternal and child health in Nepal; and Selam Ayalew will speak about short films being shown in community screenings in Ethiopia that feature teenage girls talking about their lives. In addition Radharani Mitra, Executive Producer and Creative Director at the India office, will reflect on how she has been exploring symbols such as the mother-in-law to help convey information as part of a maternal and child health project in Bihar.
Together we will make training materials that can be shared across 主播大秀 Media Action, and we hope ultimately shared externally too, with that growing collection of practitioners who value the role of drama in development, or who are interested in learning more about production issues and programme-making to deliver development aims.
I’ll be there helping to facilitate the workshop and sharing reflections on my work on , the radio soap that has been running for almost twenty years in Afghanistan. And in my blog I want to share some insights about why drama for development can be so important.
The actors who star in New 主播大秀, New Life are not full-time professionals – they have other jobs. I was asked to go to Kabul to help this talented and creative group strengthen their acting techniques and so, we hoped, ensure the impact of the programme is sustained into the future.
New 主播大秀, New Life has always been popular, so much so that when the Taliban were in power, the programme was the only form of entertainment that they turned a blind eye to. Just like The Archers, the UK-based radio soap I am part of, the central characters are much admired and loved. This means that the writers’ strong storylines are absorbed by a rapt audience. Stories have covered issues such as women’s health, landmine awareness, early marriage, livelihoods and village disputes. They never tell listeners how they should behave but by provoking discussion often change attitudes, offering choices and suggesting resolutions to problems.
Shirazuddin Sidiqi, Afghanistan Country Director, told me a story illustrating the power of the programme. He described a letter he had received from a listener who had lost a leg by standing on a landmine. He could no longer work, nor support his family and he was at a loss and suicide seemed to him the best option. The very evening he was preparing to kill himself, by chance he heard an episode of New 主播大秀, New Life about a character who sounded just like him. His fictional alter ego had not decided his injury meant suicide, but had instead sought out opportunities to retrain as a tailor. Not only did the listener put the knife he’d intended to use away, he started to pick up his own life and became a bike shop worker too. A true story with real impact. The UN has attributed the drop in landmine accidents to the influence of this and other similar stories in the programme.
So as I shared ideas with the enthusiastic actors and directors in Kabul and we had fun exploring new techniques including improvisation to build on their skills, I also reflected on how important this work was for them. It‘s through their acting being as truthful as possible that the drama will leap out of the radio, as all good drama should, ensuring that listeners continue to see New 主播大秀, New Life as a necessity, providing both wonderful entertainment as well as offering solutions in their everyday lives. For 主播大秀 Media Action it means drama can be quite literally a lifeline to listeners.
Look out for our blogs and tweets during the week as we’ll be sharing insights as Ignite and WOW progress.