Drama New Zealand and Drama Australia are collaborating to present the combined 2024 drama education conference: Kia Tōnui/Flourish.
Gather in Aotearoa New Zealand in the embrace of our unique whānau/community to share the riches of storytelling through whakaari/drama and theatre in education, to create new ways to regenerate, revive and thrive as creative educators and artists.
In this Drama New Zealand and Drama Australia combined conference we will consider our foundational roots, cast the seeds of the imagination, and nurture the multiple ways to sustain and grow our practice, so that our communities can be nourished by changes much needed for the future. It is time to celebrate the many ways we flourish in our work.
Poipoia Te Kākano Kia Tōnui – Nurture the seed, and it will flourish.
The 2024 Conference Kia Tōnui – Flourish aims to:
Explore how drama education continues to craft hope, remedy and collective insight to relieve, prevent and counteract the challenges of living in times of unprecedented crisis, inequity and change.
Celebrate the centrality of radical creative praxis that underpins drama education. How does drama activate transformative (he)artful experiences that are vital to helping us live and learn on a damaged planet? How do we build creative agency, compassion and critical understanding? In what ways does our work strengthen the capacities and ethical imaginations of the people we work with and for?
Examine new directions and effective methods that have been forged to meet the challenges we face: in our pasts, presents and possible futures.
Allow us to hold space for each other, our students and our communities, to tell and stage stories that matter.