Jim draws on drama to empower community

Galway’s ALâ social and community arts group is leading the way nationwide because of the type of Forum Theatre it has developed. The demand for its workshops and its continental style theatre, which encourages ad lobbying and interaction from the audience, is on the increase.

Dubliner Jim Aherne has been with ALâ since the start nine years ago and was recently re-appointed as its Project Director. These days ALâ offers workshops in forum theatre to community groups all over Ireland, although Ballybane remains its home base.

Jim’s functions include planning and implementation of activities, training of committee members and liaising with organisations and agencies seeking training workshops. He enjoys every minute of it and gets great satisfaction from seeing how ALâ has developed from its early days to the present.

There is a great sense of community in Ballybane and in Castle Park, where Jim lives with his wife Marie. Their six children are grown now and living elsewhere, two of them in Perth, Australia. Last Christmas was Jim’s first visit to Down Under though he was on his way there in 1972 when he came to Galway, met his future wife and never looked back.

“I never got to Australia because I met Marie, then got a job in Hanley’s Engineering and stayed here. But I don’t regret it. I loved Galway from the start and even more so when I started volunteering with the Macnas Parade in their early days.

“Out of that experience came ALâ when a few people living locally here decided to set up their own community theatre. It was very much influenced by Julian Boal who was into improv, a very different type of theatre to the traditional style we were used to.

“It was based on participation and was from the start inclusive of everyone in the community. It was established as a fully inclusive, personal, social and community development organisation using drama, arts and education as development tools.

“And it worked and continues to work. There were little or no opportunities for people in this area to get involved in theatre before ALâ. From day one, it encouraged people to join, to use their own stories, their imagination and in the process, to learn new skills. They also got experience in a fun, nurturing environment.”

Jim speaks with pride about ALâ, which is now one of the city’s recognised community arts groups, although he says the organisation could do with better funding because of growing demands for its work.

Since it was established, the ALâ teams have run 500 workshops in drama, technical aspects of theatre, street performance and prop making, using facilitators from at home and abroad.

For more on this feature, see the Galway City Tribune.