ŠUGLA

Informal education in the performing arts in an urban setting

Under the guidance of renowned and experienced Slovenian and foreign mentors, ŠUGLA participants develop/strengthen performative skills, gain knowledge about group dynamics, body awareness and use, voice development and use, stage presence and character building, recognition and use of physical and other content/characteristics of various urban spaces, building a dialogue with people in it, or interaction with the audience, and the basics of creating an artistic production.

Beginnings and progress

In 2007, in order to attract new generations, we founded our School of Street Theatre (ŠUGLA) among the first in Europe. This project soon developed into a world-renowned educational program, the pedagogical contents of which are (were) useful for the wider performance community.

On the 10th anniversary of its existence (2017), we therefore renamed our project: School of Contemporary Performative and Street Arts. Young creators with various artistic interests as well as (prior) knowledge and experience have been invited to participate and learn the basics of performing and creating in a public space, and to get to know theatre as a living organism (the elements of the latter are also extremely useful in the field of education).

In 2020, the continuity of ŠUGLA was interrupted by the corona virus epidemic. In the spring of 2022, we revived the non-formal education and training programme in the form of a series of intensive workshops (Month of Education), and just over a year later we upgraded it thematically into so-called artivism, as we supplemented it with content on the usefulness of performative methods, techniques and tools for personal and/or social engagement.

In May 2023, we conducted a survey entitled Interests and Needs for Education in the Field of Performing Arts in a Public Space. Based on the results of this survey and almost 20 years of experience in the field of knowledge transfer, we designed a