Galle Literary Festival 2016
With the aim of offering equal access to an arts platform for children with and without disabilities,the Department of Disability Studies in collaboration with the Department of Fine Arts (Drama & Theatre and Image Art Unit and the Visual Arts & Design and Performing Arts Unit), the Department of English and the English Language Teaching Unit organized a stall titled 'Common Ground' at the Children's Festival of the Galle Literary Festival 2016 on Saturday the 17th of January 2016 at the Dharmapala Park in Galle.
Leading up to the festival, the students and staff of the department offered inclusive theatre workshops in Jaffna, Mannar, Kalmunai, Ragama and Ratmalana. The activities offered at the stall included:
Three of the inclusive theatre performances emerged from the series of inclusive drama workshops undertaken. Following on from the workshops, original drama scripts were written by Dulip Luxman (Batch 3), Samadhi Edirisinghe (Batch 5) and Nipuni Adikari (Batch 6). The three inclusive theatre pieces used a combination of Sinhala, Tamil, English and Sri Lankan Sign Language. We showcased performance groups from Jaffna,
Kalmunai, Tangalle,Ragama and Ratmalana. Our aim was to move away from the portrayal of children with disabilities as 'gifted' or 'special in spite of a disability' or even 'differently-abled' and move toward inclusive theatre productions where the individual's unique contribution to the production is appreciated and the collective experience and expression valued.
Art sessions were offered with a variety of art activities including a multi-sensory group mural connected to a children's story using recycled items in keeping with the university's and the children's festival's eco-friendly theme, hand and finger-painting and free-compositions, which culminated in a mobile art exhibition.
This session was a presentation of multilingual poetry by undergraduate students.We also offered children who accessed the stall the opportunity to experience multi-sensory children's stories and poetry activities.
