The Hua Dan Team
Hua Dan’s Programmes
Children’s Education
Hua Dan’s Children’s Education ran both weekend programmes and summer camps that used theatre to inspire confidence, creativity and leadership in young people. The work was with children in order to identify challenges they faced in their lives and performance was used as a way to help them solve their issues and let their voices be heard in the community.
The work also involved senior participants where they were part of a theatre troupe, to perform and be role models to other children in the community.
“Before coming here for a drama workshop, I was just like a small bird in cage, but after coming here I was like a bird getting freedom”
Women’s Empowerment
Hua Dan’s Women’s Empowerment workshops had two purposes:
To enable migrant women to develop confidence, self-esteem and the ability to communicate effectively and empower others at the same time.
To identify promising leaders in the community to be trained as Hua Dan facilitators in future workshops with other women and children.
“I used to be irritable before, just like a tiger, and usually beat my little sisters and brothers, while now I am like a bird, quite persistent when caught by someone, willing to fly to a free land.
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Hand Made In China
Hua Dan’s theatre company, Hand Made in China, developed interactive theatre shows on Hua Dan themes, namely, women’s empowerment and Chinese migration. It shared a little-known side of Chinese culture with a wider audience. They performed twice at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and, in 2014, won a Fringe First for their intimate show in a rickshaw, ‘Moons, Migration and Messages, Chinese Women’s Whispers’.
Hua Dan highlighted new views of China by sharing thier experience of the bottom of the pyramid and their grassroots knowledge of one of the most fascinating periods in Chinese history.