Barefeet Theatre is a cultural movement founded in Zambia in 2006. A group of young Zambian artists, many former street children, and Irish artists who met by chance (some would say fate), and began to collaborate creatively together, eventually delivering theatre workshops which sought to empower and protect vulnerable children living on the streets of Lusaka. The workshops proved a great success, and the individual artists and performers who had come together around a simple idea – that artistic expression was a powerful, transformational tool, came to realise that through this powerful medium, there was an incredible opportunity to reach out to a great many vulnerable children, guiding them off the streets and into Children’s Centres and other protective environments in which they could be nurtured and cared for, protected and empowered. From these humble beginnings, Barefeet Theatre was born.
Since those first tentative steps, Barefeet has grown organically into a vibrant, exciting and ground breaking organisation, working with 40+ partner Children’s Centres in communities across Lusaka, as well as in five other provinces across Zambia. Many of the Barefeet members themselves have lived on the streets and grown up in the very Children Centres with which Barefeet now works. They are the true spirit of the organisation, the living evidence that vulnerable children against whom all odds are stacked, can grow into inspirational leaders and role models – to continue the cycle and ensure that a new generation of vulnerable children can understand themselves as more than outcasts from society, learn the skills they need to grow and develop, and reach their full potential. The key to this journey of self-realisation, growth and learning has always been creativity and artistic expression – the transformative power of creative arts.
