Taking part in the process of providing alternative education for underprivileged children of age 7 to 10 years through Theatre in Education (TIE) is a part of Samuho’s mission of bringing social change through application of theatre. With that aim Samuho has been providing the TIE resource support to the NGO - Towards Future (TF) for their ‘Kid’z Planet’ School at Muhammedpur village of Rajarhat, Kolkata, who is providing basic primary education to the first generation learners of lower economy class background. Samuho is facilitating in agency & confidence building, self-expressions, original thinking that evokes a creative environment to accept the formal education offered by TF. Since February 2022, our pilot phase of work has visibly impacted in preventing drop outs, promoting interest building towards the lessons, non-violent communications and gender equity awareness among children.
Birati Samuho Performers Collective (Samuho) is a queer and female centric creative collective that promotes and practices inclusivity of all gender identities. As inclusivity of all genders cannot be practiced in isolation; Samuho has been working for cultural accessibility for all the marginalised and economically challenged sections of the society since its inception. The purpose for Samuho is to promote free thinking and agency building, propagate awareness about equity, equality and sensitisation across gender, class, caste and religion with an approach that is non-hierarchical, nurturing, practical, community and future forward. We collaborate with Towards Future as their vision of addressing issues like class and gender discrimination, empowerment of women at the grass-root level, sensitization regarding gender and sexuality, building empathy towards people and environment aligns with us to a great extent.
On observing the impact of the pilot phase of the project ‘Theatre for All’ on the children of ‘Kidz Planet’, we felt the necessity to continue it as a part of the regular curriculum there to bring in sustainable changes in the educational environment through theatre practice. We have decided to collaborate with Towards Future for a long term association of at least three consecutive years as the expert of Theatre in Education. We have a pool of trained theatre practitioners and applied theatre specialists invested in this process. We are also running a ‘Train The Trainers’ program to train more experts to facilitate the process in community sector. As a non-profit organisation working in alternative education with the help of applied theatre, we seek all the help to sustain this change-making project.
“Theatre for All” project aspires to achieve -

• Drop Out Prevention
• Agency & confidence Building
• Self-Expression
• Public Speaking & body language
• Concentration
• Empathy Building
• Non-violent communication
• Emotional Quotient Development
• Identifying gender/class discrimination and learning to address them properly
• Sensitizing about gender and sexuality
• Developing cognitive skills
• Developing sense of discipline