From 7 to 9 August, the Crossborder Project with ONG’s Intered Castilla-La Mancha y Proyecto Kieu organized Fábrica de Cambios: Encuentro de Teatro, Educación y Comunidad. 

The event has been full of meaningful moments for many of the participants.

Elena, who took part to the event, told to Emotive her personal experience about the days in Medina de Rioseco, Valladolid, Spain.

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"The experience of participating in "Fábrica de cambios" in Medina de Rioseco has been a wonderful gift of summer and certainly a turning point in my work, social life and projects.

I belong to several organizations and theatre groups, so I'm used to attend meetings and I already knew some of the games that we did. However, the atmosphere they created was really special and enabled a very deep connection between people.

One of the most valuable aspects of the meeting was the variety of cultures and backgrounds who came together. There were people from different parts of Spain, from other countries and speaking different languages, with different professional skills: arts, social intervention, social movements, teachers, architects, lawyers, journalists, officials of local councils, musicians industry, etc. This heterogeneity allowed exchanges were very rich and had great potential for mutual learning. In addition, this guaranteed that everything we would learn there was to put into practice in different areas of many parts of the world.

To have there the PETA Theater Philippines was exciting, both for the project itself, as we had experienced before, and both for the way they work. We learnt some interesting tips on how to energize groups to make collective decisions, how to encourage people, how to take out the artist within and how to work with communities through a comprehensive approach to performing arts. They said that they had the experience of working with communities that have suffered environmental disasters and, through its methodology, they could pass from feeling themselves as victims to survivors.

Working with La Mancha, of Uruguay, it was wonderful and cathartic. "Playing is revolutionary because it is useless," they told us. Reflect on not pervert the game with "objective" because the transformative potential of the game, to play to play is lost. Through recreational games we can access an emotional state in which the expression of emotions and the connection between group members is promoted.

I also want to highlight the enormous professionalism and dedication of the groups that dynamize the event and of all those attending. It was a wonderful injection of transforming energy and of desire to continue working for social change necessary and possible, each one in his/her area.

There were spaces for play, creativity, to show others projects, to build projects with others, to meet the Community (through a hilarious gymkhana running through the streets and landmarks of town). The closing evaluation was so emotional that tears and laughter sprouted form our gutters.

Therefore, Fábrca de Cambios take me a first-hand experience of empowering and transformative artistic methodologies; an understanding of other cultural realities are how they are using tools that are working powerfully; it brought to me contacts with key people and organizations that will continue to transform the reality; mutual learning, feelings, emotions and unforgettable memories; concern about further developing art projects for social transformation."

Elena Méndez Hérnandes from la coordinadora de ONG de España

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