Beautiful Resistance emerges from Palestine as a concept and philosophy that aims to inspire hope and promote life through performing and visual arts as non-armed ways for peaceful and creative self-expression. It helps to build peace within individuals, in turn to become peace-builders in their community and beyond.
with Abdelfattah Abusrour (Palestine)
Date: Sunday September 12th of 2021
Time: 14:00 (UTC/GMT)
Duration: 90 minutes
Download: [ Video ] (1.3Gb) | [ Audio only ] (85Mb)
Living under occupation, oppression or under a dictatorship regime, or desperate conditions are factors to push individuals and communities to despair, violence, and continuous trauma that will disrupt normal life and pressure people in their humanity, daily life, family life, and relations with each other, and with those around them. Beautiful Resistance, is a way using performing and visual arts, culture and education to provide beautiful, creative and peaceful possibilities for self-expression, to all people tell their own versions of their stories, history, what hurts and what bring joy, their hopes and dreams, build their internal peace to be peacebuilders, change the world and creating miracles and think of alternatives to weapons and violence to make a change that they can be proud of for themselves and the generations to come.
Beautiful Resistance is a way to celebrate all forms of resistance against injustice, oppression and occupation that are legitimate in such contexts, with emphasis on using such peaceful and creative ways to empower people to be active changemakers, and instead of waiting for others to make a change, and instead of waiting for others to provoke miracles, be the change makers that provoke miracles to happen
Beautiful Resistance put the emphasis the everyone is a change makers, that the world doesn't change by good intentions and that these good intentions should be accompanied by good actions, that these changemakers are role models for others and generations to come to inspire hope, because we simply don't have the luxury of despair.
Abdelfattah Abusrour is founder and director of Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society, established in 1998 in Aida refugee camp-Bethlehem. His concept and philosophy “Beautiful Resistance”, using performing and visual arts, culture and education, is a creative and peaceful expression in situations of oppression and trauma to provide possibilities to save lives and inspire hope and build peace within individuals to be peace builders in their communities and beyond.
Abusrour is an author, actor, and theatre director, with a PhD in Biological and Medical Engineering from France. Abusrour is the first Ashoka fellow-Social Entrepreneur in Palestine, and he is a Synergos - social innovator fellow. He was elected president of Palestinian Theatre League and many other organizations. He has done conferences and practical workshops in different countries using Beautiful Resistance, to empower people through building peace within themselves, and be active change-makers, and instead of waiting for miracles to happen, be able to act and provoke miracles to happen.
Directeur Général, Comités pour le Développement et le Patrimoine (CDP)