The Phnom Penh Players made a donation to Epic Arts in March 2009 from the profits of the Christmas pantomime. This donation was used to fund the first month of the brand new Vocational Training Programme. The Vocational Training Program aims to provide young people with disabilities with an opportunity to receive formal training in the arts and an opportunity to further explore their own individual creativity. Building upon this they will be provided training in the area of arts-based workshop facilitation so that they can apply their new skills and creative confidence to develop and present their own arts-based workshops. In this way the course fills an important role in achieving the vision of epic by training the teachers who will staff the arts centre and the performance, workshop and vocational training programme into the future.
The programme works with 12 young people with disabilities on a full time basis. During the first month of the course, the students worked with a theatre teacher and began to explore their own stories and experiences through theatre and journaling. During this workshop module they developed a short performance about one of the students’ experience of love. This show was performed at the opening of the Epic Arts centre to over 500 people. The students will continuing developing this performance in to a longer show that will be toured around 22 communes in Kampot later in the year.
