The Hands Up Project is committed to social justice, global citizenship, and freedom of expression, and upholds the belief that language learning is enhanced through creativity, performance and collaborative interaction. To these ends, the project affords opportunities for children in difficult circumstances, such as Palestine, to use English to communicate with one another across borders in a “spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity.” UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989

Actions

Most of our online work takes place over Zoom and Facebook Live. We use the most basic technology to ensure access to all Palestinian children, wherever they are. This also means we can reach audiences around the world.

Supporting education and teacher development in Palestine

Before the pandemic our remote volunteers around the world and Palestine based volunteers ran co-taught Zoom sessions for classes in Palestine and refugee camps in Jordan - accessing around 500 children a week. When the pandemic kicked in and schools around the world closed, at the request of Palestinian teachers, we ran daily team-taught Facebook Live sessions and, with UNRWA Gaza, won the prestigious British Council ELTons Local Innovations award. Of course, schools are working as normal now and our international volunteers meet with classes in Palestine every day of the week to tell stories, play games and chat with students.

We also run free teacher development courses for Palestinian teachers and free specialised courses on Remote theatre and other areas. In summer 2022 teachers joined free courses in Remote Theatre and how to use storytelling to help build students’ confidence in the language of science!

Storytelling & creative writing

Storytelling is at the heart of every culture and has always been at the heart of what we do . Whether it’s students sharing their traditional stories, or remote volunteers and young people sharing anecdotes from their daily lives, something extraordinary happens every time we meet. The world gets a little closer to us, our hearts become a little more open and our understanding stretches towards people we may never meet.

Remote Theatre

We provide ongoing support to the drama clubs we helped to establish in schools all over Palestine. The clubs, and our annual playwriting competition have stimulated a brand new art form - remote theatre. Short plays written by the children are shared with the world in our SaturPLAY live sessions, published in our 3 books - “Toothbrush”, “Welcome to Earth” and “Popcorn” and performed live at special events . Because of the pandemic a new genre of remote theatre where the children perform through individual webcams ( Lockdown theatre ) has emerged.

The 2021 competition featured a brand-new element - all the entries were international collaborations. We were really excited about seeing internationally produced plays and we weren’t disappointed. Palestinian students worked with students from as far afield as Venezuela, Pakistan, Mexico, Italy, El Salvador, Turkey and Romania. The three winning plays Welcome to Earth, I can smell her and One World, Different Stories were Palestinian collaborations with the Czech Republic, Argentina and Germany.

The first place went to Welcome to Earth acted and produced by students in Palestine and the Czech Republic. As part of their prize they travelled to Belfast in the north of Ireland to meet each other for the first time and to convert their play into a face-to-face multimedia performance featuring dance and visual art.

Finalists from 2018 & 2019 (over 100 children) left Gaza (a rare opportunity for the children to travel within their own country) to perform in The Palestinian National Theatre in Jerusalem, in Alrowad cultural centre in Bethlehem, and in The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Overall winners also travelled to the UK to perform live in schools, theatres and at our annual conference.

Now we’re looking forward to this year’s competition where the plays will be taken from Nick Bilbrough’s book “Doing Remote Theatre” and once again feature international collaboration.

Connecting

The Hands Up Project has always been about children - their enthusiasm and desire to learn and to share their stories. Now those same hands have joined across the world in online sessions connecting schools, classes, families and homes. These have included projects such as the link-up between 15 classes in Hazelwood High School in Bury, UK with 10 different schools in the West Bank and Gaza, Oh My Home! where families meet for a chat about their lives. These open up channels of communication previously denied to Palestinian people. The connection between children in hospital in Gaza and the West Bank was another instance of this rare and beautiful opportunity.

The Hands Up Project conference held in Belfast in May 2022 has resulted in new connections across Ireland. Palestinian teachers met with an extremely warm welcome throughout their stay in Belfast and were able to share their expertise and creativity with a wider audience.

Special Events & Awareness Raising

The story of Palestine is one which has too often been ignored or even denied. The children’s live performances of their plays at commemorative days such as International Women’s Day, Cancer Awareness Day and on the launch of their book “Popcorn” help them to tell the world about their situation.

We also present regularly at international conferences and run an annual conference of our own, raising awareness globally about our work and education in Palestine in general. 5 Palestinian teachers travelled to Belfast in May 2022 to present their groundbreaking work at IATEFL - the biggest event in the English Language teaching calendar - and at our own conference at Queen’s University immediately afterwards.

In a recent fundraising event in Spain, a hugely ambitious programme of live plays from Palestine met with a warm reception. Children and teachers overcame technical problems to touch the hearts of of everyone in the audience.

Popcorn Launch Poster 2021 JPEG Artwork.jpg

Impact

STUDENTS

“Being able to give our message to the whole world is the greatest achievement of my life”.

- Haya, student

“I was full of joy when we were among the winners and my eyes were full of tears because the first dream of my life was come true.”

Student, Gaza

“Lately , this Covid 19 started to spread in Gaza to add insult to the injury .People in Gaza have been under unfair blockade for a long time and they have been suffering from powercut , lack of clean water and regular bombings during the last two weeks . In spite of all of these unbearable events, there is a reason to be optimistic because there is "drama". So drama is the only way to escape from this sad reality to make our own world that is full of peace and colour it with our favorite colours.”

- Nour, student

“We did not even go out to the West Bank, how do we go out once to London? It's a great miracle. I mean, a great miracle. People do not believe if we said to them, they did not believe, you will go to London, you are going to travel, this is unbelievable! How did you manage? This is something that made us feel very happy.”

- Batoul, student

TEACHERS & VOLUNTEERS

“I was elated and slightly sad after we switched off the computer. Did that just happen? I've spent many years learning about Gaza and about what is going on there. It felt amazing but also slightly surreal to form a connection with a family living in this besieged strip of land. And yet here we were, talking about swimming in the sea, drawing, vegetarians, cooking – ordinary stuff. “

- Katy, participant in the family link-up sessions

“When a twelve-year-old student has his or her own literature published in a book, this means that the Hands Up Project opens the space for Palestinian kids to become their own Shakespeares.”

- Sahar Salha, UNRWA teacher, Gaza

“You cannot imagine the day we have the Hands Up weekly session and you cannot imagine how they wait for this session. It’s like a celebration for them, it’s like they’re waiting for their birthday. The books too - it’s also very important to see their plays being written in books - that’s wonderful for them.”

- Hana’a Mansour, UNRWA English teacher, Gaza

“To be honest, seeing that intercultural communication taking place was really heart melting! I mean, just to see the students, especially the ones from Palestine, who probably have never been given the chance to leave Palestine and interact with anyone outside their country, was really overwhelming!”

- Raja’a Abu Jasser, Palestine coordinator

“In my plenary address at the recent IATEFL conference in Birmingham, UK, I was pleased to be able to show a clip of Nick teaching one of the classes in Gaza to the more than 1000 participants who were present – and to the many more who were watching a live-stream broadcast of my talk. I was using this clip as an example of how a new methodology might be synthesised out of a combination of traditional classroom ingredients, very simple technology, a strong desire to cross physical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries, and a commitment to enlist education to resist oppression and intolerance. The response was amazing!”

- Scott Thornbury, teacher, teacher educator and author

“I have the privilege to work alongside Nick and provide the children of Gaza with a rare opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills and enjoy a moment of normality amidst the extraordinarily challenging circumstances they have been experiencing.”

Rola Mattar, facilitator, The Tamer institute for community Education , Gaza

“The siege makes learning English language very difficult, and the economical situation means children lack access to effective teaching materials. Meeting with Nick through Zoom has not been an easy task because the electricity is not available all the time. However, the English sessions were like a dream for the children. Most students have never had a live listening experience with someone from outside Gaza before.”

Haneen Besseiso, facilitator, The Tamer institute for community Education , Gaza

THE AUDIENCE

OUR PURPOSE

OUR VISION