{"id":280,"date":"2017-04-11T17:05:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T17:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/?p=280"},"modified":"2017-04-11T18:53:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T18:53:11","slug":"send-in-the-clowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/send-in-the-clowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Send in the clowns"},"content":{"rendered":"
Clowns Without Borders Ireland continues their mission with a tour to refugee camps in Lebanon to ensure there is ‘no child without a smile’<\/h5>\n
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Children of Al Jaleel school for Palestinian refugees in Talabaya, Lebanon. Photograph courtesy of Al-Jana<\/p><\/div>\n

PLAY AND LAUGHTER\u00a0are normal occupations of young children. It\u2019s how they learn about the world and how to engage with it and each other. And how to relieve themselves of the stresses of their challenging encounters with it.<\/p>\n

For millions of children enduring and displaced by wars<\/a> and hardship, however, the new normal is despair, fear and trauma. There\u2019s little to laugh about when your home and neighbourhood have been destroyed by bombs, members of your family have been killed and you now live in a refugee camp, suffering poverty, hunger, disease and the harshness of the elements.<\/p>\n

But laughter is what Clowns Without Borders<\/a> seeks to provide. The organisation had its beginnings in Spain in 1993, when schoolchildren in Barcelona asked a Spanish clown to perform for refugees in the Istrian peninsula of Croatia. It has now spread around the world, with chapters in 14 countries bringing performing artists to visit the children in refugee camps, conflict zones and areas beset by emergency. Their performances give these children a chance to escape, however briefly, their hardships and anguish with a few hours of light-hearted joy.<\/p>\n

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CWB Ireland team at Chatila, a Palestinian camp in Beirut: (l-r) Orlagh de Bhaldraithe, Daniel Guinnane, Helen Gregg and Niamh McGrath. Photograph courtesy of Al-Jana<\/p><\/div>\n

CWB Ireland<\/a>, a group of professional street artists, theatre practitioners, puppeteers and circus performers \u2013 all volunteers \u2013 recently travelled to Lebanon to visit several refugee camps. This year, Helen Gregg (team leader and performer), Daniel Guinnane (musician\/performer), Niamh McGrath (performer) and Orla de Bhaldraithe (musician\/performer) spent three weeks on tour of the refugee population, assisted by the local arts organisation Al-Jana<\/a>. Its director, Hicham Kayed, wrote: \u201cThe performances had a strong impact on the children, often deprived of education and cultural or social activities. [They] would light up as they rejoiced in sharing in the tricks the clowns performed and the pranks they played on each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting into practice their motto \u201cNo child without a smile\u201d, CWB Ireland\u2019s tour of 19 different locations included Palestinian camps such as Burj Barajneh<\/a> in Beirut of Nahr el-Bared<\/a> in Tripoli\/Trablus, and new encampments of Syrian refugees in rural areas such as the Beqaa valley.<\/p>\n

This was the second time round in Lebanon for Gregg, the leader of the group. She had expected the situation mostly to encompass the Syrian conflict and its refugees. The additional experience of going to the Palestinian camps that have been in existence in the 1940s \u2013 \u201cwhere the residents are the descendants of those people who fled the Arab-Israeli war of that time\u201d and are born as refugees, Gregg explains \u2013 was an eye-opener.<\/p>\n

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Children watch the show at SP Overseas Syrian camp in Saida. Photograph courtesy of Al-Jana<\/p><\/div>\n

The experience was special not only for the children. \u201cTo be honest,\u201d Gregg says, \u201cthe work is a gift to us. To be afforded the opportunity to connect with people from cultures and life experiences so different from our own, both children and adults, is a rare thing.\u201d She describes meeting tiny Syrian children in the Beqaa valley, who fled with their families to \u2013 or were born in \u2013 the windowless shacks and muddy fields near the Syrian border, and \u201cmaking them smile and laugh with our messing, being gifted with their hugs and kisses\u201d. Every interaction was important to them, she says: \u201cIt\u2019s terribly sad and yet wonderful at the same time to be able to make that human connection, to share fun together and bring the memory of them home.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when they asked us, as they often did, if we would be coming back tomorrow \u2013 well, that was heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

CWB Ireland have since embarked on a tour of Syrian refugee camps in Jordan with Hullabaloo, a new circus show by Laura Ivers, Maria Corcoran, Tony Mahon and Hillas Smith, directed by Angelica Santander<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clowns Without Borders Ireland continues their mission with a tour to refugee camps in Lebanon to ensure there is ‘no child without a smile’ PLAY AND LAUGHTER\u00a0are normal occupations of young children. It\u2019s how they learn about the world and how to engage with it and each other. And how to relieve themselves of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}