Breaking Walls uses creative writing and theatrical performance to build global peace and acceptance. We promote an ever-expanding inclusive, respectful and trusting world cultivated by our artists, ambassadors and associates. To ensure that Breaking Walls creates a sustainable collaboration, we offer three levels of involvement for youth: artists, 13 to 20, write and perform their original work for a live audience; ambassadors, 17 to 21, former artists who mentor the writing/performing process; and, associates, 22 to 25, participants from past Breaking Walls Boot Camps who have become prominent leaders in their home communities.
Breaking Walls young people represent agents, beneficiaries, and victims of major societal changes and are confronted by a paradox: to seek integration into an existing order while also serving as a force to transform that order. In the Breaking Walls tradition, locating their place on the world stage is not a solitary journey, but a collaborative and socially integrative one.
Arts Education In-School Workshop
Breaking Walls collaborates with students and educators in the New York City public, private and charter schools to focus teen minds on identity, values, and empathy, and guides them to explore significant, current issues in their lives while building literacy, critical thinking, and presentation skills. Starting in November 2017, Breaking Walls Arts Education began collaborating with students at the Paula Furst Schule in Berlin. Plans to expand into classrooms in the Cape Town public and private school systems starting in the spring of 2022 are in progress.
Virtual Artist Cooperative
Breaking Walls incorporates ensemble-building, creative writing, and peace-making training to explore a range of artistic disciplines by each individual artist while simultaneously building trust and cross-cultural connections across our virtual world. Each Cooperative culminates in a creative collective sharing of a video presentation on our CONNECT * CREATE * CHANGE YouTube Channel.
Community-Based Five-Day Initiative
Breaking Walls explores a range of artistic disciplines while simultaneously building trust and cross-cultural connections in a virtual world. Initiatives bring together small groups of young people from two unique cultures to experience ensemble-building, creative writing, peace-making training, and the sharing of life experiences – all culminating in a performance of their original writing as a creative collective in front of a live audience.
Annual, International 18-Day Summit
A Breaking Walls Summit consists of five components: Pen-to-Page-to-Stage – using the arts to build self-awareness and empathy; Ensemble-Building/Peacemaking training – developing leadership skills and the sense of community; Community Service – creating a sense of gratitude among our youth; Creative Activist Lab – crafting “seed” ideas to be “sown” to positively impact their home communities; Health & Wellness – conducting a conversation on the health and well-being issues facing youth and building the awareness that a healthy child is a whole child.
The culminating ensemble performance is the main impact of Breaking Walls – the creation of an inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful cohabitation and social interaction built on the arts where diverse voices and cultures achieve a unified, creative outcome.