The Fred Newman Center, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

The Fred Newman Center for Social Therapy has been providing leadership in the border community between the United States and Mexico for over 6 years. The center is located in Ciudad Juarez where the level of violence seen in the past years has taken a heavy emotional toll on the population. Today we see an emerging cultural renaissance with murals on street corners, youth doing music, and street performers putting on a show on car stops. However, there are still many profound challenges with violence, corruption, and social unrest continuing and compounding the social and emotional damage of over a decade of extreme violence. During this period of transformation, the staff of the Fred Newman Center has been building a community of play and development activists with several groups across different settings (both educational and therapeutic) and involving collaboration with different organizations, NGOs, and independent groups. It is a heterogeneous group who have participated in workshops, classes, social therapy groups, and collaborations. At ISCAR we will share the impact that the activists say performance has had on their lives, their work, and in how it has transformed their perspective with respect to learning, growing creating, and building community.