Evaluating

I’m not very good at getting up in the morning, although 7:30am starts every day at TfaC have definitely helped to budge my obstinate body clock since I arrived in Ghana. Today, however, I sprang up at 6:30am, threw a bucket of water over myself in the name of a morning wash and walked the 18 steps that represent my journey to work every morning.

It wasn’t even a proper day at work: indeed yesterday wasn’t even a proper day of work, a public holiday to celebrate the nation’s farmers called, appropriately, Farmer’s Day. Today, was, however, one of the last things I’ll do for Theatre for a Change this time around: an evaluation workshop for all the participants who’d taken part in the InterACT! video link project.

One thing that I could safely say before we’d started evaluating InterACT! was that I was sure we’d chosen the right people for it. Collins, Nii, Forster, Amanda, Susan, Diana and Reggie are seven of the best ambassadors I can imagine for TfaC. Their commitment is incredible, their passion tangible, their enthusiasm infectious. They are also all really generous, funny, personable, modest and kind, qualities sometimes missing in UK theatre. Last week Nii, Collins and I went out for a drink at Wato Spot, near James Town, and I felt as if any cultural barriers that had ever been there had vanished in the midst of ridiculous chat about the world, relationships, football and each other.

Given the relative success of the project and the positive feedback from the UK participants, the evaluation was a pleasure, a chance to review what we’d gained from it (a reduced fear of cameras, for some; a real insight into another theatre world, for others) and – more importantly – how it’s going to run in the future. Our greatest achievement, then, is probably that the whole group immediately started talking about next year, about how they would run the project in Ghana and what they needed in order to do it.

I’ve already started making sure that the skills necessary to continue with this kind of project exist within the TfaC team. Last week I ran a 3 hour video editing training session for the office staff – Johnson, Linda, Amanor and Owusu – which made me feel like a nervous teacher in front of an excitable, silly but really intelligent class.

We’ve also done some assessment of the internet skills within the InterACT video-makers and have set up a bit of peer-training to ensure that, at the very least, everyone who participated is able to contact their respective UK link by email.

In fact, that aspect of the project – continued email contact between the partners – is the most crucial element for its continued success. We don’t need videos (though in this first phase of the project they have been invaluable in giving the participants a more personal connection to their link). We don’t need exchange visits, although of course that is a wonderful final goal for the project. We just need a really simple, inexpensive way to maintain and build the relationships that we’ve spent the last 5 weeks creating – and email, as the internet expands across Ghana, is the best and easiest way to achieve that.

After the training session I took everyone down to the beach, to one of my favourite spots in Ghana – Tawala Beach Bar, 3 minutes from my house and one of the friendliest places to drink Club Beer and eat Chicken and rice in the whole country. There we sat under thatch sunshades, drinking malta and coke, eating rice, banku and chicken, making jokes and chatting.

It’s hard to believe that in two weeks time I’ll leave all this – the sunshine, the beach, James Town - but most importantly the outstanding people that I’ve met while I’ve been here. I will be incredibly sad to go.