Background

In October 2000, a couple of theatre practitioners from Sweden, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who knew the importance of drama, theatre and education for the society met in Awassa, Ethiopia to discuss the possibility of networking among practitioners. The meeting was held during the first Children and Youth Theatre Festival by Eastern Africa Theatre Institute, EATI

The meeting ended in a co-operation between RAD, the National Organisation for Authorized Dramapedagogues, and EATI to stimulate future networking and co-operation among practitioners at a grass root level. Establishing a website was one of the assignments that this cooperation decided upon and the project was called Dramatool.

Since 2002 we are eleven people from the five countries; Ethiopia, Kenya, Sweden, Tanzania and Uganda working in the project working as a team. What we have in common is experience in working with drama and theatre as a tool for an inclusive and human society. All of us are involved in drama/theatre projects in one way or another such as artistes, teachers, storytellers and students. No one of us in the team has English as mother tongue and none is an IT-expert. All have also experienced a need to communicate with colleagues about what we are involved in.

We have since 2002 worked on issues such as: What are the needs of other practitioners? And in what way can a website meet those needs? How can we reach out to the grassroots level? What is the infrastructure like? Is it possible to work with IT in the rural areas around the world? If you are an IT-illiterate, how can this be faced? Is it even possible to use Drama as a method to develop IT-pedagogy? How can we learn from each other and document the learning, build our own university? How can we use all the creativity amongst us drama/theatre people and the flexibility of a network to strengthen the democratization movements in Eastern Africa, Sweden, the world...

By traveling across the regions and conducting different workshops, we have discussed and tried various ways to approach the questions. This website is an outcome of the work done during the last years and it is given focus on certain issues such as transformation of society, children at risk, gender, HIV/AIDS, corruption and issues concerning education and performance.