10. Building communities through theatre: Angie Pena Arenas
Angie came to the UK, from Colombia, when she was 5 years old. She worked her way through youth theatre (a clear argument for good value for public money!), studying drama at University of East Anglia, and recently culminating in creating plays that make the distant and difficult relevant here and now.
We talked about how the current discourse around climate change could be divisive and how listening to what individuals care about can help make better policies. She makes a great point for strategic thinking for public policy – when everything is an emergency it’s too late to prioritise. If you know something may happen, plan for it!
Angie is working with young people at Company Three. She recently wrote Are You Ready? which was staged in the Good COP Bad COP festival organised by the Rising Tides environmental theatre company to coincide with COP26.
If you’d like to try your hand at playwriting and use it for communicating about climate change, check out the monthly online workshops Climate Acts by Write Now Berlin.