Applied theatre in support of visually impaired children and young people

The proposed project is based on the understanding that confidence and our ability to express ourselves are fundamentally connected with our skills to make decisions and to interact with the others without fear and concerns. In addition to that they are also connected with curiosity and being open to new opportunities and alternatives. It is connected with the feeling that we have the right to express our ideas, feelings and emotions and grow. These qualities and skills require considerable efforts from contemporary children and young people. Acquiring them is even more complex when we speak of visually impaired children and young people. The fragile confidence and the lack of faith in their own abilities, often leads these children and youths into isolation, which they often impose themselves, in order not to undertake risks and responsibilities, which they consider themselves unprepared for. All this, combined with low expectations on behalf of the parents and a society, which is inadequately informed about neither the specific limitations of a particular condition, nor the operative abilities of people with that condition, ultimately leads to more than 90% unemployment among v.i. people at working age. In order to break the above depicted vicious circle and to change the attitudes, expectations, tempo of integration, adequacy of guaranteeing equal opportunities and finally – employability of people with impaired vision, we propose to adopt and make sustainable in Bulgaria the application of our Welsh’ partner experience: - in organizing and conducting drama workshops for children and young people with impaired vision for the purpose of developing their verbal and physical expressive confidence - and in increasing the so called visual awareness concerning the needs and possibilities of children and young people with impaired vision, both among the specialists caring about them and supporting the process of their development, as well as among parents.

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