Our Story

Our Experience

Misriyati began with questions about how we live together.

In the early 2000s, a car sticker circulating in Cairo showed a fish being consumed by a shark. For a group of young social activists, the image became a starting point for conversations about what we were witnessing around us: growing social and religious tensions, shrinking spaces of encounter between people from different backgrounds, and the increasing normalisation of aggression in everyday conflict.

We were concerned that many everyday encounters had become marked by tension rather than connection; that people increasingly sought safety only among those who were similar to them; and that it was becoming difficult both to express who we are and to accept others in their difference.

In 2004, these questions led to the creation of Misriyati.

Our first workshops took place with children and young people in Mokattam. Through games, storytelling, songs, movement and dialogue, we created participatory learning spaces where participants could explore identity, communication, conflict and different ways of relating to one another.

As Misriyati grew, our work expanded to educators, young people, refugees, social workers, civil society organisations and institutions. We developed curricula and learning programmes around peace education, conflict transformation, diversity, nonviolence and social cohesion.

Theatre became an increasingly important part of our practice.

Through Theatre of the Oppressed, Forum Theatre, Playback Theatre, devised theatre and other participatory approaches, we discovered theatre as a powerful space for making lived experiences visible, encountering different perspectives, questioning power, listening to stories and collectively imagining alternatives.

This led to a growing body of theatre-based peace education practice and to community and youth theatre initiatives in which participants are not simply audiences or learners, but creators of knowledge, stories and possibilities for change.

Today, Misriyati works at the intersection of peace education and theatre for social change. We train practitioners, create theatre with communities, and develop methodologies that others can adapt and carry into their own contexts.

Across this work, the questions that started Misriyati remain alive: How do we live with difference? How do we engage conflict without reproducing violence? And how can we create more just and solidary ways of being together?