The last of three excerpts from Greta Rios' lecture for International IDEA's "Stockholm Series" on Climate Change and Democracy.
Continued from the second excerpt, from Zimbabwe.
The idea behind legislative theatre is to create empathy among decision makers and community members so that better policies and governance decisions can be made together. Legislative theatre involves gathering a group of people and having them enact a situation where they have to find solutions to everyday problems that a certain community is going through, but intentionally having the different actors work together to put the scene into motion.
As such, we could end up with local public servants acting as citizens who are affected by the public servants’ daily decisions or, on the contrary, we could have the citizens play the role of the public officials who have to enforce such decisions and report on their results to the public. In this manner, each side in a situation gets to see and feel what the other side is feeling and thinking when making decisions. Afterwards, they use that information to jointly create solutions or identify actions to solve the problems in question.
The case study I want to bring to your attention is taking place in Uganda and combines legislative theatre and a technique called Music, Dance and Drama to establish a dialogue between civil servants and girls, boys, people with disabilities and refugees on the topic of swamp degradation in the village of Masajja B. This process is led by our partner, the Might Foundation, a participant in our fourth and newest cohort of the Climate Democracy Accelerator.
Masajja B is a village in central Uganda, located around 8 kilometres south of Kampala. Even though it is located very close to the capital city, this area has become more and more vulnerable to flooding as a consequence of climate change since it is located in a swampy area. When there are heavy rains, the roads in the community become impassable, greatly affecting the inhabitants for days and even weeks at a time. The legislative theatre process that the Might Foundation is currently designing aims to find joint solutions to this problem.
The team at the Might Foundation will shortly begin working with their mentor to create the legislative theatre experience. In the meantime, let’s imagine what that will look like. Think for a second that we are the inhabitants and authorities of Masajja, and we have all been given roles to play, using music, dance and drama, during the legislative theatre process.
One of us will be handed a slate of paper that will read: ‘You are the highest authority in the village of Masajja. You were elected democratically, and you are well liked in the community because of your deep understanding and swift solving of the problems the people of Masajja face. Lately, however, you have been losing popularity because the roads that connect Masajja to Kampala have become flooded again, and people are afraid they will lose their businesses.
What is worse, there has been an outbreak of malaria due to the stagnant water, and even some crops have gone to waste. Even your own family is struggling, as your children are not able to attend school, and your spouse had to miss a medical appointment because of the flooding. You really want to put an end to these floods, but, for God’s sake, rain is something that is absolutely out of your control! There is only so much you can do about this.
If things do not improve, you are beginning to fear that the people will start rioting or moving elsewhere. Please prepare a five-minute monologue, using rap, to communicate your current status to the audience.’ Yet another one of us will get the following assignment:
‘You are a 14-year-old girl who lives in Masajja. You attend the local middle school and enjoy spending time with your friends. Your favourite subject in school is biology, and you plan to become a doctor in a few years. Lately you have been missing school a lot because of the floods. When you miss school, you get a bit anxious. You have been working hard to get admitted to the best high school in Kampala, as a first step to attending medical school later on. You are thinking about moving with your auntie in Kampala permanently and transferring to another school there, but this will take a big economic toll on your family. If it comes to that, you are willing to do it. Nothing will come between you and your dreams. Please prepare a five-minute dialogue between you and your mother, explaining the reasons why you have decided to move with your aunt.’
And a third role will read: ‘You are a scholar who has devoted your life to studying the impacts of climate change around the world. You have been hired by the authorities of Masajja to inform the community about climate change, its possible future impacts in the community, ways to increase the resilience of this particular settlement and some case studies in nearby places where successful measures have been taken to tackle or mitigate climate change. Please prepare a short song that uses local rhythms to convey this message.’
After the scene is set, the participants will gather and conduct a debrief that will enable them to collect information and lessons learned on how everyone is experiencing the situation, the things they would like to change and possible solutions from different points of view. The outcomes of the legislative theatre exercise will then be used to debate, propose, vote on and decide on policies to improve the situation surrounding the swamps in the region.
This might sound unbelievable to some of you, but legislative theatre has helped many people say things they would not normally voice out loud for fear of repression or, worse, for lack of words to express them. In spaces where civic restrictions and fear are high, the use of ludic instruments such as legislative theatre and music, dance and drama help address those restrictions and bring about a more even ground for establishing dialogue among actors.
In the case of the village of Masajja, there will be two stages in the process. One of them will take place in person and the other one online. The in- person process has been especially designed to include people with disabilities as well as people who may not be able to afford Internet access to
participate in the later stages of the process.
After the in-person stage concludes, there will be a month-long process that will take place online, where people will receive training and participate in the discussion around the policies created by the in-person group. In this way, the team of the Might Foundation made sure that the whole process
remains inclusive throughout every stage of execution.
In spaces where civic restrictions and fear are high, the use of ludic instruments such as legislative theatre and music, dance and drama help address those restrictions and bring about a more even ground for establishing dialogue among actors.
As you can see, legislative theatre shares the three main components I have been highlighting throughout the presentation. I would say this is the mechanism that has the highest rank when it comes to learning by playing. People seldom realize it, but when they are playing the role of whoever is on the other side, they gain big insights into why the problem may be harder (or more urgent) to solve than they first thought, for example.
The speed factor is also present here. The time it takes from conducting the legislative theatre process to setting in motion agreed-upon measures to tackle a problem will always be shorter than waiting for the government to come up with a top-down solution that most times will not be tailor-made for the affected community.
The third element is the power of agency that the process conveys to the people. It is those affected by the problem who are using their voices, putting the problem into words and then helping find solutions to it.
People who participate in these processes normally adopt the idea that they do not need to sit and wait for the authorities to solve their problems: they can contribute their ideas, inside knowledge and creativity to find solutions and improve their communities.
Although the legislative theatre process in Masajja has not happened yet, I wanted to present this example as a case we could all follow closely to see what results the people in this community come up with. This is one of the 15 projects that will be taking place after their teams finish their training process in our Climate Democracy Accelerator and receive their implementation grants. Our strategy at People Powered is to help launch pilot programmes that can then inspire broader waves of change.
And this is happening. Nearby communities in both Santa Ana and Chipinge have started similar processes to the ones I talked about today, and we are sure that, as our programmes expand, more and more communities will follow. The challenges that climate change presents to governments and communities are not easy to solve. Some of these challenges pose a direct threat to the communities’ ways of life, to their traditions and beliefs, and even to their land.
However, at People Powered we believe that one way to create more inclusive and sustainable solutions to these challenges is by making sure that every individual gets a chance to express their views and ideas on how to jointly prevent, face and solve the crises that climate change will bring about. We are using democracy to create and replicate these solutions around the world, and we are inviting others to join us in this adventure.
