Smashing Times in Thessaloniki

Smashing Times company manager Freda Manweiler and festival producer Ciara Hayes were delighted to travel to Thessaloniki to attend the final meeting of the Theatre in Palm project.

Hosted by our partners Cube, we enjoyed two days of engaging and creative meetings. Freda and Ciara reflected on the project as a whole before attending the meeting, and with the gift of hindsight, were able to see a trend of engagement throughout the whole process. We worked with a number of emerging theatre artists across the island of Ireland to create and present new and exciting performances. From roadshows to theatre movements, labs to residencies, the reflection sessions facilitated by the Turku team showed us all that was achieved.

One of the highlights of the trip were the creative processes employed by the facilitation team during all of the workshop sessions. Particularly engaging was the technique of decorating an egg with our highlights of the project, before presenting them to the group as a whole. A real sense of fun and camaraderie was achieved between all partners through this exercise. Both Freda and Ciara left feeling they had learned some new methods in creative facilitation which they are excited to employ in future projects.