Mr Peter Kiddle
Nationality: United Kingdom
Year: 1991
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
I first went to Acco, Israel, invited by the British Council, where I was asked to create a theatre performance in the streets of the old city for the next year’s ‘Acco Festival’.
After visiting the secondary schools I got somewhere near ninety of the youth of the city – roughly half Jewish, from the new city, and half Arab, from the island which is the old city – to create our first show in 1988. Over the next three years I kept a mixed core group of them together each year for new shows.
On the strength of this work I was awarded a Wingate Scholarship that took me back to Israel in 1991. It had a real impact on my life – and, I believe, that of several other people. I was able to work with a group of a dozen of them to carry on working together as a semi-professional company, working throughout the country as a unique, mixed-race group of theatre makers.
Wingate helped me to sustain a real “first time” project for and with the two communities and set me on track to work around the world since then with multi-racial communities.