Music in the streets

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Tags: Advancement Office, centenary-edition, UQ Endowment Fund

Whether in India, Brazil, Cambodia or Mali, one UQ scholarship recipient is helping open up the arts to everyone.

Hana Alhadad

When Oscar-winning music composer A R Rahman, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, invited UQ PhD student Hana Alhadad to work alongside him in India’s impoverished slums, she accepted instantly.

Ms Alhadad, who dons the hat of artist, mentor, writer and producer, and who was awarded a UQ Endowment Fund (UQef) scholarship, was last year chosen to work as a consultant in the A R Rahman Arts Foundation in Chennai; helping to kick start its music and dance educational program.

“It was a surreal experience working with a musical genius, especially watching him patiently mentor a group of children from the slums who have never before had any form of education in music or the arts,” she said.

“The opportunity that he has opened up to the disadvantaged children of Chennai is immense and has certainly and quite literally brought smiles, song and dance to the streets.”

Over the past eight years, Ms Alhadad has gathered many stamps on her passport, travelling the world promoting youth theatre and the use of performance in building peace.

Her artistic prowess and love for humanity has seen her work with youths in Thailand, Cambodia, Mali and Peru, as well as on the award-winning Children of the Sea and Finding Marina projects in Sri Lanka, which concentrated on the issues of the Boxing Day Tsunami and civil and ethnic conflict.

Ms Alhadad’s interest in the arts also took her to Brazil to work on the UNESCO-supported Capoeira Knights (pictured below) – which was based on a Brazilian martial art  and dealt with the issues of violence, drugs and gangs.

Capoeira Knights received critical acclaim at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival while Children of the Sea received the Spirit of the Fringe first prize at the 2005 event.

Finding Marina – a production that tackles the civil conflict in Sri Lanka – won the Amnesty International Award for theatre that changes people’s lives in 2006.

“Traditionally, education in arts and performance has ironically been a closed group available to those who can afford it,” Ms Alhadad said.

“Since 2004, I have endeavoured to open this group, take performance training to the streets and provide free education in refugee camps.

As Ms Alhadad embarks on a PhD in UQ’s School of Social Work and Human Services and the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, her interests move closer to home.

With the help of a UQef scholarship, Ms Alhadad aims to examine the process of performance in the transformation of conflict.

One of Ms Alhadad’s research goals is to build a creative art for peace project where professionals train youths in the performing arts, culminating in a multicultural Indigenous-themed theatrical production.

Founded in 2007, UQef is a means for donors to support academic initiatives in areas of social need.

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