International Creative Dialogues about COVID 19

What is it about?

Creative improvisational responses to the current pandemic across several countries using zoom. When the health crisis initially presented in China, the presenters began a project in which we used creative arts improvisations to communicate personal experiences of the pandemic using dance, dramatic, art, music, and storytelling online with Chinese creative art therapists. As the crisis spread, this project expanded to include participants from Europe, North America, Australia, and Guam. During online sessions we began using physical storytelling and soon added vocal musical improvisation. Often our groups did not share a common primary language. We found the use of the arts to help develop a more universal communication. Physical Storytelling is a form in which a small group of dancers and musicians create improvisations in response to verbal narratives provided by individual as well as group reports. The group then continues to respond to these initial episodes using spontaneous art and poetry making to expand the metaphor making. We have been to include people from across several countries and cultures who presented important personal events related the COVID crisis from their communities using Zoom. The metaphors we have create are able to express nonverbal subjective experiences that are not available in the usual verbal social commentary and offer a different view of the inner emotional experience of this current crisis than is presenting in other forms. This project is ongoing and has followed the stages of spread of this global crisis.

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Why is it important?

These creative metaphors provide a view of subjective emotional responses to the current pandemic that are shared by people form different countries and cultures

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