Background
ASSITEJ (International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People), was founded in 1965 with the understanding of theatrical arts as a communication tool combining the peoples with different cultural and historical backgrounds; thus, serving the peace in the world. Its activities focused on the theatrical arts realized with and for children and young people. The international organization of ASSITEJ is composed of seventy different country centers.
ASSITEJ Turkey is one of the national centers whose the activities are aligned to the international purpose and philosophy.
ASSITEJ Turkey intends to guide and support all kinds of theatre ensembles whose aim is to produce the qualified aesthetical experience for children and young people. It supports artists, educators, and youth workers with guidance and organizational support.
What we do
Activities of ASSITEJ Turkey includes international festivals for theatre and young people and seminars, panels, workshops, training courses, and so on.
For example, ASSITEJ Turkey has been a partner of Bursa Metropolitan Municipality in Turkey to organize one of the biggest international theatre events in Turkey. Since 1982, Bursa International Festival of Theatre for Children and Young People has hosted hundreds of theatre groups and many generations were touched by the festival spirit ever since. ASSITEJ Turkey has also organized and supported many other festival events all around Turkey such as in Izmir, Mardin, Eskişehir, and Ankara.
ASSITEJ Turkey provides arts education to increase the quality of young actors’ and actresses’ impact. ASSITEJ Turkey organizes workshops several times in a year. As ASSITEJ Turkey has a membership system that is based on application & evaluation procedures, the member profile provides many resourceful people with certain merit. That is how we are able to create platforms where more capable and experienced meet with the less advantaged but motivated people. The main aim of ASSITEJ Turkey is to create this platform and make it sustainable.
International cooperation of ASSITEJ Turkey
ASSITEJ Turkey has always been a part of the international community of NGOs which share the same values and objectives.
With EU funds, ASSITEJ Turkey organized an international TC called “Get Included”, which intended to introduce Forum Theatre as a tool for social inclusion to six partners from Europe. In this project, we shared our expertise and long research on forum theatre with our partners. Since then, we have been partners with more than ten projects and twenty international events funded by EU, mostly youth exchanges and training courses. Many Turkish participants who are active members of ASSITEJ Turkey have had the opportunity to develop themselves professionally and personally. Recently, ASSITEJ Turkey's EU project called "Reconnection" is approved and funded by Turkish National Agency.
Over the last decade, ASSITEJ Turkey was in close collaboration with Danish centre of ASSITEJ. ASSITEJ Denmark is one of the oldest and the most active ASSITEJ national centres in the world. With the help of this close collaboration that we have been building through festivals, seminars, and congresses; ASSITEJ Turkey was able to support groups of artists to create their own ensembles. The members of these groups were educated with the experienced directors from Denmark and some of them had the opportunity to be sent by ASSITEJ Turkey to Denmark to learn and to come back to serve.