ISTA CONNECT FESTIVALS
The ISTA Connect initiative was established in 2013 as a service learning programme with the aim of using theatre and the ISTA Experience to:
The ISTA Connect festival brings together young people from ISTA member schools with young people from the host school’s pre-existing local service learning community to engage, not in service learning, but in collaborative theatre making and play. Learning at an ISTA Connect festival comes through dialogue, exchange and friendship.
In this festival, we are welcoming students from the Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPSA) circus school to share in the Connect festival experience. Students at this school graduate to be performers as part of the Phare Circus. Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPSA) or “The Brightness of the Arts” is a non-profit Cambodian association improving the lives of children, young adults, and their families with art schools, educational programs, and social support since 1994.
- connect diverse young people from different communities and backgrounds;
- connect ISTA to a range of communities and young people worldwide that it has not worked with before and who would benefit from the ISTA Experience;
- burst what might be conceived as the international school “bubble”;
- connect ISTA member schools to their communities through service learning.
The ISTA Connect festival brings together young people from ISTA member schools with young people from the host school’s pre-existing local service learning community to engage, not in service learning, but in collaborative theatre making and play. Learning at an ISTA Connect festival comes through dialogue, exchange and friendship.
In this festival, we are welcoming students from the Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPSA) circus school to share in the Connect festival experience. Students at this school graduate to be performers as part of the Phare Circus. Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPSA) or “The Brightness of the Arts” is a non-profit Cambodian association improving the lives of children, young adults, and their families with art schools, educational programs, and social support since 1994.
what is service learning?Service learning involves bringing together diverse communities so that they can learn together and from each other. The service provided by the school community could involve a wide range of possibilities from building or decorating facilities, to language lessons and the provision of leisure activities or to the development of programmes of empowerment for excluded communities. ISTA Connect festivals work with the host school’s existing service learning relationships.
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WHO ATTENDS THE FESTIVAL?As well as students from the host school and from visiting schools, young people from the school’s service learning communities attend the festival as full participants. Their participation is funded by ISTA and they are referred to as ISTA Scholars. The purpose is not simply altruistic but, in accordance with the ethos of ISTA, designed to bring different people from different places together through theatre.
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about cambodia
Cambodia was once a middle class country. The people dreamed of the lives that we live, many even lived them too until a man named Pol Pot, and his regime known as the Khmer Rouge, gained power over the people of Cambodia. During his reign, the country’s middle and upper classes were wiped out in a genocide. Between 1975 and 1978, an estimated two million Cambodians died by execution, forced labor, and famine. Virtually a whole generation was lost. The result is what we see today - a largely poorly educated nation with major wealth and societal issues that are gradually being addressed.
Cambodia is a land of juxtapositions. Beauty and sadness. Hope and fear. The haves and the have nots. It is often difficult to imagine the Cambodia of the past that once was a thriving culturally rich and economically stable society before the Khmer Rouge came to power.
The Khmer Rouge remained in power throughout those years using tactics of fear, extreme violence, separation of families and friends and by wiping out the educated first. Pol Pot dreamed of a classless, agricultural, communist society where everyone was the same and there were no differences between the people as everyone would be a farmer of the same status. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, people who had passports, spoke a foreign language, had money and who questioned the actions of the Khmer Rouge were the first to be executed. Anyone who was seen to have a special skill, wore eyeglasses or were in possession of any type of modern technology or artistic talents were seen to be an enemy of the Khmer Rouge. They separated families to ensure that individuals felt no connection to one another and these individuals often had to choose between their own survival over the lives of others (including their family members). The human ability to face adversity were put to the test daily just to stay alive.
Cambodians endured this extreme dystopia for years and eventually the Khmer Rouge was forced from Phnom Penh by Vietnamese troops on 7th January 1979. They abandoned the society that they created and receded into the jungle to hide. They remained there and continue to act as a guerrilla organisation for years with Pol Pot continuing to be recognised as the political leader. In the aftermath of the Vietnamese war, the Khmer Rouge were viewed by the United States as an ally working against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. As such, the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot were supported by the United States and other countries, even allowing Pol Pot to have a seat in the United Nations.
This support did not last forever and eventually the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot fell due to a splinter group within his own regime turning against them. In 1997 he was captured and placed under house arrest. He died of natural causes in 1998. Pol Pot never had to face the charges that were ultimately brought forward against the Khmer Rouge including charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The UN-backed tribunals began in 2006 and lasted for 11 years with the convictions of only three members of the Khmer Rouge brought to justice.
The Cambodia we know today is trying to heal through these traumas that the nation endured. Phnom Penh itself is helping the country's economy continuously grow. Non-governmental organisations are spread throughout the country determined to rebuild the economy, the social structures, landscapes and its people.
All information was sourced from the links below. For more information about the history of Cambodia during this period, please visit these links for further reading and also check out the wide array of resources that can be found on the RESOURCE page on this site.
Cambodia is a land of juxtapositions. Beauty and sadness. Hope and fear. The haves and the have nots. It is often difficult to imagine the Cambodia of the past that once was a thriving culturally rich and economically stable society before the Khmer Rouge came to power.
The Khmer Rouge remained in power throughout those years using tactics of fear, extreme violence, separation of families and friends and by wiping out the educated first. Pol Pot dreamed of a classless, agricultural, communist society where everyone was the same and there were no differences between the people as everyone would be a farmer of the same status. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, people who had passports, spoke a foreign language, had money and who questioned the actions of the Khmer Rouge were the first to be executed. Anyone who was seen to have a special skill, wore eyeglasses or were in possession of any type of modern technology or artistic talents were seen to be an enemy of the Khmer Rouge. They separated families to ensure that individuals felt no connection to one another and these individuals often had to choose between their own survival over the lives of others (including their family members). The human ability to face adversity were put to the test daily just to stay alive.
Cambodians endured this extreme dystopia for years and eventually the Khmer Rouge was forced from Phnom Penh by Vietnamese troops on 7th January 1979. They abandoned the society that they created and receded into the jungle to hide. They remained there and continue to act as a guerrilla organisation for years with Pol Pot continuing to be recognised as the political leader. In the aftermath of the Vietnamese war, the Khmer Rouge were viewed by the United States as an ally working against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. As such, the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot were supported by the United States and other countries, even allowing Pol Pot to have a seat in the United Nations.
This support did not last forever and eventually the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot fell due to a splinter group within his own regime turning against them. In 1997 he was captured and placed under house arrest. He died of natural causes in 1998. Pol Pot never had to face the charges that were ultimately brought forward against the Khmer Rouge including charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The UN-backed tribunals began in 2006 and lasted for 11 years with the convictions of only three members of the Khmer Rouge brought to justice.
The Cambodia we know today is trying to heal through these traumas that the nation endured. Phnom Penh itself is helping the country's economy continuously grow. Non-governmental organisations are spread throughout the country determined to rebuild the economy, the social structures, landscapes and its people.
All information was sourced from the links below. For more information about the history of Cambodia during this period, please visit these links for further reading and also check out the wide array of resources that can be found on the RESOURCE page on this site.