Emersion in culture of community you are working with..

[SkinnyTwin Theatre]

It is easy to" look in" sometimes when you are working with a community. coming and going sometimes makes it easy when dealing with communities with complex issues. It becomes easy to just address the issues and not deal with the human side of it , the effect on community members for example. As a n artist working in the community, I have worked on projects where social workers worked alongside with myself for assessment and refferals of participants if need be. These were communities with a refugee background. I never socialised or interacted with them outside the one or two hours we had during work shops.

It seems a mudus operandi was set by recognising the term refugee community, there were there and inaccessible apart from the limited time we had during the workshops. From the language they spoke, the food they ate, their religion and their general way of life, all these would have helped my understanding of people i was colloborating with. Constant refusals to share food, visit homes was like a chain around my neck as this was an" imposed professional " ethic not to visit or interact with "clients"

I wonder now how my interaction with the community members would have been different or influenced by emersing myself in their culture?