Project

Creation for social transformation

Gender-based violence, trauma, emotional health, and ageism are the focus of the debate at the 2nd Exchange Conference on Theater and Literature for Social Transformation.

Performance of 'The Monsters' on the UIB campus.
ARA Balears
16/10/2025
2 min

PalmThe Riera building is hosting the 2nd Exchange Conference on Theatre and Literature for Social Transformation this Thursday. The aim is to highlight the links between research, literature, and theatre to address gender-based violence, trauma, emotional health, and ageism, and to foster the creation of emotional bonds and spaces for change. The UIB has brought together researchers and experts in literature, theatre, mental health, and social action for a day of analysis and debate on the transformative potential of writing and theatre, understood as tools for building more resilient, sensitive, and committed communities for social change. The research project Remlicat (Emotional Regimes of Contemporary Catalan Literature) and the group associated with the Institute for Research and Educational Innovation (IRIE), The Shape of Dreams, are the driving forces behind this initiative.

The conference builds on previous experiences such as the meeting Weaving networks of affection, held in Inca in June. The project is loosely inspired by the studies of Barbara Rosenwein, treating the affective community as a web of emotional bonds that literature and theater can help create. This research allows for the design of creative and educational methodologies that turn art into a tool for direct intervention in real-life problems, paving the way for reparation, inclusion, and social cohesion.

The goal is to give visibility to projects that use the performing arts and narrative to address gender-based violence, trauma, emotional health, and discrimination stemming from ageism, fostering the creation of support networks, generating new emotional bonds, and offering innovative spaces for resistance, expression, and collective reparation. Attendees learned about five outstanding initiatives on narratives of aging, reading projects that resist gender-based violence, autobiographical narrative practices to address trauma, and theatrical proposals that impact emotional and cognitive well-being. The topics that have been put on the table have been:

  • Aging and gender in contemporary literature, by Maricel Oro (University of Lleida): on how aging is expressed in current literature from a gender perspective that challenges stereotypes and opens up new narratives about old age.
  • The project Tough readings, by Teresa Iribarren (UOC): a critical look at literature that represents and denounces gender-based violence, promoting resistance actions through writing.
  • Fertile narrative, by Clara V. Fleck: writing to give meaning to what has no meaning; autobiographical narrative as a tool for redefining traumatic experiences and building new personal connections.
  • Bibliotherapeutic practices in mental health, by Maria A. Mesquida (UIB): Reading and theater in mental health settings facilitate emotional expression and promote the well-being of people living in vulnerable situations.
  • Theater as a social prescription. Impacts on emotional, social, and cognitive well-being, by Marco Calabria (UOC).
  • Parkinson's on Stage: Creating a Community Dramaturgy, by Sofía Malagón and Montserrat Butjosa: the staging of Parkinson's gives visibility to the disease and builds emotional support networks through the theatrical creative process.
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