Building Tools for Resilience with Theatre

The Erasmus+ project Caring4Careworkers (CARE²) addresses the emotional and structural challenges faced by social and care workers across Europe. Care workers are at the heart of our societies, yet they often experience burnout, isolation, team conflicts, and systemic undervaluation of their work. CARE² uses Theatre of the Oppressed as a creative and participatory method to explore these struggles and develop sustainable solutions.

What we do

  • Research through theatre: Together with care and social workers in Austria, Germany, and Ireland, we investigate the daily realities of precarious care work and bring them to the stage through participatory performances.
  • Festival of Care (Vienna, 2025): An international gathering where forum theatre performances, workshops, and discussions create space for dialogue, reflection, and solidarity across borders.
  • Digital Playbook & Workshops: A practical resource with theatre-based methods for resilience, conflict resolution, and supervision in care work, designed for long-term use in education and professional training.

Our goals

  • Make visible the struggles and invisible labour of care workers.
  • Strengthen the resilience, health, and safety of those working in care.
  • Create practical tools that improve daily working conditions.
  • Connect local experiences to European-level collaboration and advocacy.

Who benefits

  • Care and social workers: as primary participants and co-creators.
  • Educators & students in social and care work: gaining access to innovative training tools.
  • Patients and society as a whole: benefiting from healthier, more resilient care structures.

CARE²
Festival of Care, Vienna 2025

Check festivals programme!

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Partner Organisations

Theatre for change Galway (Ireland)
Theatre for Change Galway Ireland, was formed in Galway in 2010 to train youth workers, social workers and educators to use TforC in their professions and become facilitators / spread the tools of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Their vision is to develop and promote opportunities for creative engagement, creative expression and dialogue that supports personal capacity building to bring about personal, community and social change that address the social injustices within which people live.
Dreaming OPEnly e.V. (Germany)
Dreaming OPEnly e.V.  is a youth-organization based in Leipzig, Germany, focused on offering developmental experiences based on non-formal learning approaches and mobility opportunities to young people in Germany and abroad. Our mission is to facilitate transformative change through non-formal education, critical thinking and artistic expression.
Theater der Unterdrückten Wien (Austria)
Theatre of the Oppressed Vienna was founded in 2003. The main objective of Theatre of the Oppressed Vienna is the application, dissemination and further development of “Theatre of the Oppressed”. In this approach founded by Augusto Boal based on Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, theatre is used as a means of artistic expression to foster social change within adult education and in order to foster dialogue on the relevant social issues.