Interdependence Day! Teaching the Sustainable Development Goals Through Drama for All Ages

Interdependence Day! Teaching the Sustainable Development Goals through Drama for All Ages Pete Mullineaux Interdependence Day! Teaching the Sustainable Development Goals through Drama for All Ages Pete Mullineaux PART OF AFRI'S JUST A SECOND PROJECT First published by Afri, 8 Cabra Road, Dublin 7, 2020 Copyright to all texts, Pete Mullineaux (2020) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, filming, recording, video or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior permission from the publisher. ISBN number 978-0-9511178-5-9 This publication received funding from Irish Aid’s WorldWise Global Schools. Afri also acknowledges the support of Concern Worldwide, Trocaire and Irish Quaker Faith in Action. The ideas, opinions and comments therein are entirely the responsibility of its authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the funders or their policies. Cover illustration by Audrey Walsh. Designed by Aisling Cunningham. “Everything is interdependent” The Dalai Lama CONTENTS Foreword By Joe Murray ....................................................................................5 Preface ...................................................................................................................6 Introduction..........................................................................................................9 The 17 Sustainable Development Goals ....................................................... 13 Project One: “Freeze-Trees/Seeds Of Hope” – exploring life on land (SDG 15), understanding bio-diversity and threatened eco-systems, linking to climate action (SDG 13), peace and justice (SDG 16), responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) ...................................................................................... 13 Project Two: “Brains, Hearts & Stomachs” – connecting the personal to the global: building on good health & wellbeing (SDG 3), linking to conflict and conflict resolution (SDG 16), climate action (SDG 13), zero hunger (SDG 2), and a range of other SDGs ..........................................................................................32 Project Three: “A Piece Of The Cake” – examining fairness and justice (SDG 16) in relation to decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), reducing inequalities (SDG 10) ............................................................................................. 51 Project Four Using “Street Markets” – exploring how to ‘sell’ all the SDGs to the public .......................................................................................................... 81 Project Five: Using “Fairy Stories” as a dramatic vehicle for exploring all the SDGs .............................................................................................................. 89 Project Six: “Putting the World on Trial”– examining child labour (SDG 8.7), and partnership for the goals (SDG 17) .......................................................101 Project Seven: using topical news stories as a dramatic stimulus. Session One “Graceland” looks at protest in relation to control of land and sustainable cities & communities (SDG 11). Session Two “Seabirds & Starfish” explores life on and below water (SDG 14), linked to responsible production and consumption (SDG 12). ........................................................................................................................113 Project Eight – “Interdependence Day: The Aliens Are Here!”– the aliens have arrived: using a science-fiction scenario to explore all the SDGs together ................................................................................................................127 Afterward........................................................................................................... 144 Glossary ............................................................................................................. 145 Appendix ............................................................................................................ 148 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... 154 About The Author ............................................................................................ 154 FOREWORD Afri first crossed paths with Pete Mullineaux in 2005 on the eve of our annual Famine Walk in Mayo, when students from local schools presented a drama piece on a related theme which they had devised with him. It was a fortuitous meeting and began a relationship that has since seen Pete become an integral part of our global citizenship education team. We are delighted to publish Interdependence Day, following the release of Exploring Development Education through Drama and Theatre in 2014. Pete is without doubt among the leading proponents of theatre and drama as a means of education and awareness-raising on global issues. It is extraordinary to see him walk into a classroom of–sometimes reluctant–TY students and within minutes have them on their feet doing ‘freeze-frames’, ‘spatial triangles’, ‘hot-seating’ or whatever is the chosen methodology for the day! His explanation as to why he uses theatre and drama is insightful and revealing: ‘it is… to “show”– illustrate, reveal, demonstrate, throw a light on a subject in a way that invites/challenges those watching to ‘see things’ in new ways’. With Interdependence Day we get the benefit of Pete’s lifetime of work in this area. The book addresses the Sustainable Development Goals, and is the fourth in a series of educational resources published by Afri under the title ‘Just a Second’. These books emerged from an Afri campaign to invite people to stop and think about the devastating impact of the war industry on people and planet. We began this campaign in 1991 when the annual global arms budget was in the region of $800 billion. We demonstrated what could be achieved with the equivalent of ‘just a second’ of that money, with which we funded 26 anti-poverty projects around the world. In the meantime, as the planet cries out for action on the climate and biodiversity crisis and the Sustainable Development Goals remain unachieved, the financial cost of the war industry in 2019 exceeded a mind-boggling $1900 billion! Yet, unbelievably, tackling the war industry is not even included as one of the SDGs. Why? Because the countries making millions from the misery caused by this industry refused to have it included! 5 Such obscene priorities underline the importance of this publication, the urgent need for awareness-raising and action, such as that inspired by the inimitable Greta Thunberg. Greta’s gesture of sitting in front of Parliament with the simple message that ‘our house is on fire’ has sparked a global wave of youth activism on Biodiversity and Climate Change. We must build on this and continue to work, to educate and to insist that the tired old politics of exploitation, division and destruction is over and must be replaced, urgently, by one in which care for people and planet is centre-stage. Interdependence Day is a vitally important stepping-stone on the road to a brighter, more sustainable and more humane future. – Joe Murray, Afri Coordinator – 2020 6 PREFACE The old adage, “making a drama out of a crisis”, can be perceived as an exaggerated and possibly self-indulgent response to a challenging event or difficulty. Some of the criticism aimed at Greta Thunberg suggested she was taking the climate change situation far too personally, getting carried away by her emotions and generally being over-dramatic in her response. It’s true she speaks from the heart and when addressing adults says such challenging things as “I don’t want your hope, I want you to panic.” What often gets missed is that she also offers the very calm assertion: “Please, I simply want you to listen to the scientists.” The truth is we need to combine both approaches: yes, let’s panic in the sense of appreciating the urgency, as Greta also says, “the house is on fire.” But we do also need calm, clear thinking and hope. Through her own clear thinking and actions and the sincerity of her heart Greta obviously does offer hope, as well as inspiration, especially to billions of young people. Between panic and hope I actually think it’s both rather than one or the other and I believe that’s what Greta means taken in the round. In this book we will take the phrase ‘making a drama out of a crisis’ literally in a double-sense: firstly, the crisis will provide theraw material out of which we can construct the drama, and then secondly, we will be exploring how making drama might help us find a way‘out’ of the crisis, as we use our imaginations to think outside the box. And clearly there IS a crisis: endless wars, pandemic diseases, mass poverty, systemic racism, climate change, rampant species destruction and soil depletion, gender discrimination and other gross inequalities... so any ‘drama’ we invent will merely reflect the dramatic situation that already exists. But in exploring the SDGs we will also endeavour to go beyond simply being against these obstacles and try to frame pictures of an alternative and improved reality. The Coronavirus crisis has been a reminder that we are a global species; how we are deeply interconnected with one another as well as with everything in Nature making up our one and only planet Earth. If we do ever have to face in reality the well-worn science-fiction scenario of

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