Malawi workshops – an update

Sharon KalimaSharon Kalima is the Make Art/Stop AIDS programme officer at ArtGlo Africa, and the Culture and Bodies arts facilitator for the project.

In May, she helped run three workshops in Lilongwe, Malawi. Here, she talks about those workshops and what she found inspiring about them.

Malawi workshops – an update

Sharon Kalima is the Make Art/Stop AIDS programme officer at ArtGlo Africa, and the Culture and Bodies arts facilitator for the project.

In May, she helped run three workshops in Lilongwe, Malawi. Here, she talks about those workshops and what she found inspiring about them.

“The conventional workshops are usually mainly talks—where we sit people down and talk to them about non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes, and how to prevent them.

“People find them boring, and do not pay attention. When we use art to communicate, we use a universal language. We hoped the workshops would allow us to use art to explore participants’ experiences of non-communicable diseases and to work with them to develop interventions that would really resonate with local residents.”

Focus on hypertension

The workshops took place in February and May  2019. Two were creative workshops where women and men separately used arts-methods to portray non-communicable diseases and their risk factors. The third workshop brought the men and women together to design interventions aiming to encourage local people to improve their own risk factors.

“At our workshops,” Sharon continued, “there was a feeling that we should definitely be using the arts. The participants told us that drama was the arts-based method most people understood. There was also a suggestion that we use poetry.

“A poster was also one of the art forms that the participants chose to do as part of their intervention; participants will create posters from scratch and add in their own messaging around non-communicable diseases.

“During the creative workshop, we asked our participants to use their bodies and senses to express diseases like hypertension and cancer. What did they look like? Sound like? From there, we developed performances.

Arts ‘really powerful’

“Arts-based methods help us explore what people know about conditions such as hypertension and cancer, and they told us they had never thought about those conditions in this way. Arts-based methods can be really powerful.

“What I found fascinating was people’s understanding of what causes non-communicable diseases. Participants came up with many different reasons, which allowed us to think about how we could put across preventative messages such as the importance of exercising and eating a low-salt diet.

When Sharon and the other workshop organiser asked where the best place would be to perform their intervention activities, the participants suggested the market. This event will happen at the beginning of July, and Sharon is confident it will attract a big crowd.

What had Sharon enjoyed the most from running the workshops?

“Traditionally, art isn’t something people in Malawi take seriously, so I enjoyed seeing how much value our participants took from the workshops.

“One of the groups created a poem together—writing one stanza then and there. They created such a powerful poem and it was really fun watching them come up with it. It was so exciting! I wanted to hear more.

“It’s an exciting project to be part of—and I can’t wait to see the next developments.”