Intercultural Roots: An Infinite Continuum Between Arts for Health & Social Change
Intercultural Roots
Andrea Maciel & Alex Boyd
Saturday
20:00 - 21:00
ONLINE
Discussion
Co-directors of Intercultural Roots (IR), Alex Boyd and Andrea Maciel will reflect on their collaborative arts-activist and wellbeing projects ’Get Active Online’, ‘Constellations’ & ‘Ripples’ (2020). Those projects that are part of their ‘Health & WELLth’ programme have been promoting sustainable connections between practitioners while adapting the in-person classes & festivals to the online format.
IR’s motivations enable dialogue between arts for health and social change while providing a creative hub for artistic development and, in the words of practitioners, provided a “home”, a “performative healing space” and “a non-judgemental place to cultivate our inner voice and inner values”. It follows horizontal, non-hierarchical organisational structures that allow for community partnership based on ethical principles of equality, integrity and mutual benefit within intercultural realisations.
Throughout a series of creative labs, classes, performances sharing, symposiums and events, IR gathers practitioners to share processes of making art in light of new challenges and restrictions imposed by the pandemic, with a focus on the ways in which art forms can speak to social change through practices of radical care. IR promotes a collective body, manifesting a co-operative consciousness while supporting the agency of the empowered individual within the political environment in organically consultative ways.
image credits: Joaquim Bezerra
Dr. Andrea Maciel is a dance performer, scholar, therapist and teacher. Her academic/artistic work investigates the physical resonance of social urban landscapes through dance, performance and installations. She has taught movement techniques for BA and Master Course actors at Universities in Brazil, New York – US and UK. She has an extensive experience in Laban Bartenieff technique and has been teaching somatic approaches within CPD as well as utilizing those techniques in her clinic therapy practice. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts at Federal University – Brazil with a Visiting Scholarship at New York University and has 20 years of practice of physical theatre training and somatic-healing approaches for dancers, actors and bodywork practitioners. Andrea is a core member of Cross-Pollination Platform of Theatre where she is a cocreator in collaborative embodied research practice and is the Artistic Director for Intercultural Roots. Her passion to connect art, healing and public space performance has perfectly coalesced through Intercultural Roots’ ‘Arts for Health and Social Change’ programme.
Dr Alex Boyd has a passion for developing collaborations based on equity, integrity and mutual benefit. He is the conceiver and cofounder of the Embodied Research Working Group at the IFTR from which he cofounded and is Executive Director of Intercultural Roots. He is a practitioner-scholar who graduated from the University of California at Davis PhD programme with a focus on the fields of Performance Studies and Critical Education. Dr Boyd's dissertation entitled ‘The Sustainability of Traditional Knowledge Systems’ draws on what is now 3 decades of professional work in practising, teaching and appreciating Chinese Daoist embodied culture to benefit communities in the UK, Europe and North America. He is a Research Associate with the University of California at Davis (Theatre & Dance) and a Core Member of Cross Pollination. His research explores how performers can cultivate presence and express this, work that has already benefited many internationally acclaimed dancers, musicians, athletes and even CEO’s. Through his consultancy work Boyd has supported many organisations, universities and community groups world-wide, working across a diverse range of interdisciplinary curricula including practice-as-research in the arts, sport, health, social inclusion and business.