Brief project summary:
The Intiqchurinkuna Project consists of making a theater production of local myths and legends performed by school children of two different rural Andean grade schools. There will be two different productions, one each year over the first two years of the project. The children from the 4th and 5th grade (9 to 12 years old) will be prepared through art workshops from April to July. In August the rehearsals will be completed and the final result will be shown at the school, then at the district capital and province capital towns in September. For the next five years, Intiqchurinkuna project will be commissioned to contract six performances annually for each production, providing a theater director for rehearsals and a stage assistant. As the little actors finish their studies and graduate from grade school, a new group of students will be trained to replace them.
In this way a permanent artistic activity will be carried on at the school.
These theatrical performances will be maiinig high standards thanks to the constant supervision of the organizers, the ones who will take care of the costumes and stage equipment for the show at the school and away from the school.
A proper investment has to be made to create a very high quality show that could be contracted to perform at one of the many hotels in the Sacred Valley and Cusco, good enough to attract the tourists to the community itself, being a very original cultural product. In that way, the communities will be benefit by the tourism directly. At the same time, the show will be presented at communal and social events and for sure at the school anniversary celebration.
The general objectives of this project are:
Help to solve in part the lack of cultural shows and art projects for children in the Andean provinces.
To re enforce the rights of children to benefit them physically, mentally, spiritually and socially: Proper education, fun, games and recreation.
To preserve and to spread our cultural ancestral heritage.
Our specific objectives are:
To encourage the practice of art in the schools
To allow Andean schools to directly benefit by tourism.
The results that we expect to accomplish are:
To introduce in rural schools a permanent opportunity for children to develop their skills and aptitudes through having fun.
Give an opportunity to the kids to travel out of the community to show their artistic abilities and their own cultural manifestations to different audiences.
Make the children self-esteem stronger.
To preserve and let people know the valuable cultural heritage.
To create a resource to improve schools.
To show that local organized people can benefit directly from tourism through their own cultural manifestations.
The project has chosen the Umasbamba community, 35 kilometers from Cuzco, located at the Chinchero district, at 12,000 feet ASL, situated next to the beautiful lake Piuray from where the water supply for the city of Cuzco is taken. Umasbamba people live principally from agriculture and raising animals like cows, sheep and pigs. Women are traditionally weavers and they hand produce fine woolen pieces, most of them colored with all natural dyes. They sell a small amount at the Chinchero Sunday market and a few in Cusco. Part of the costumes that the children will wear in the theater performance will be woven by them and when the tourists will visit the community to enjoy the play, these women will be able to show and sell their textiles making an extra direct economic benefit to the families of the community.
There is a primary school at Umasbamba with 130 students, distributed in 6 grades. The school class hours are from 8 am to 1 pm.
“The myth of origin of the lake” will be represented by the 45 students of the 4th and 5th grade. They will be trained through workshops seven and half hours per week from April to July after class. The project will provide lunch to these children to avoid them having to go home and come back, considering that some of them live approximately one hour or more by foot away from the school.
The Art Director is Mr. Luis Ramirez (curriculum enclosed).
The coordination has been made properly with the principal of the school Mrs. Eufemia Pedraza and the president of the school parents Bernardino Hancco Inquiltupa.
Who I am and how I came to conceive of my project.
My name is Gabriela Meneses. I am a professional tour guide and a cultural promoter. I trust that art has to be part of any education system because it deals with our emotional part and give us a chance to express ourselves and have fun. Since I was a child I felt very drawn to my local culture. When I was young, I was continuously visiting all the Inca and pre Inca places all over Perú, studying and reading about the culture, and until today still participating in the traditional festivals.
In that way I realized three important things:
1. How important it is to give the proper value to this amazing heritage we have received.
2. How important education is for a real change in the society.
3. How people from our country that still live in the traditional way and keep their culture alive could organize themselves and find ways to get economic benefits directly from the foreigners who come to visit Peru.
I also noticed the big lack of interest of the authorities and very much scarcity of artistic and cultural programs for children in the provinces.
For all that I create a project and called it INTIQCHURINKUNA (Children of the Sun in native Quechua language) directed to children and youth to preserve our cultural patrimony and promote education, art, culture and recreation.
My first activity in that direction was to work with the children and young people from the Rayampata community in Calca, Cuzco in1995, to represent theatrically the myth of the community, related to some rocks shaped like a man and a woman in the very top of the mountain. I got funds from Centro de Estudios Andinos Bartolomé de las Casas from Cuzco and chose Debora Correa Benitez, actress from the renowned Peruvian Theater group Yuyachkani, to be the art Director. The impact in the community was superb for their self-esteem. Elders and adults were helping the project in many ways and got so touched that some days previous to the début they made a pilgrimage to the place of the legend to make the proper offerings and rituals.
For seven years after that I was teaching art and education workshops. In 2003 I was directing a radio program for children in Urubamba at the Educational Radio Station La Salle. Here as director of the radio show, I took advantage of the media to organize an Art Festival for children that continued for five years, consisting in professional theater shows, puppets, art exhibitions of paintings made by different schools, music, traditional dances perform by children from the high communities, make up tents and workshops. More than 750 children directly participated and around eleven thousand children and adults were able to enjoy the activities. (See the posters)
For 2008 I am coming full circle in my work to the origin and I would like to develop the rural community theater production of local myths and legends of the Andean communities. This proposal could be repeated in many more than two communities according to the financial support of people interested in this type of labor.
Thank you very much.
