Implementation

The project was carried out by two courses of Community Theatre, one in each year of the project. The bases of the two courses were similar, but there were some differences. The courses were carried out in the form of a learning project involving extensive contact lessons. During both courses there was Forum theatre events exploring the position of minority groups living in Finland, focused mainly on the Russians (the first year of project) and the Kurds (the second year), in relation to the dominant culture. Both events were organised outside of Humak in the city of Helsinki, first of them in the public city library of Richardinkatu, and the former in the Kurdistan Centre, which is a meeting place of the Kurdish association in Helsinki.

During the first year project the students had both formal and informal meetings with members of the Russian minority. The most important organisations the students cooperated with were Venäläisen työn keskus (special labour centre for Russian speaking people, linked to the Russian Orthodox Church in Helsinki), The Russian Scientific and Cultural Centre in Helsinki, the International Cultural Centre Caisa, and Russian Sadko-club Association. In addition the students interviewed 21 Russian-speaking individuals.

At the beginning of the course, by using the method of Collective Creation / Story Telling, the students studied their conceptions of being a Finn, as well as their own prejudices towards Russians and other minorities. This part of the course was taken together with the foreign exchange students of Humak, who by that time had been in Finland for only two weeks.

At the end of the course there was a forum theatre event. The students performed three Forum Theatre scenes . The themes of the event rose from the interviews during the project. There were only 30 persons in the audience, none of them being a Russian. The promotion of the event needed to be improved, although there was a mention of event in the main newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, on the same day.

The later course started with a Forum Theatre workshop. It was attended also by international students with the teaching language being English. At the end of that section, there was kind of a rehearsal forum theatre event with the students exploring situations from their own past.

After the workshop the students had informal meetings with immigrants in order to glean the background information for the final Forum Theatre event. There were two Forum Theatre scenes developed based on the interviews. After the decision of changing the event from World Village to Kurdistan Centre, the scenes were refocused to Kurds and Muslims, and in addition one new scene was made. There were approximately 30 persons as spect-actors, one third of them being Kurds. The event was a success, the dialogue between actors and spect-actors lively, different proposals for the solutions were carried out. The video of the Event can be found on this handbook.