New series of drama workshops launches in Stirling to give refugees a voice through storytelling
A new drama and storytelling project bringing together Ukrainian, Afghan, Sudanese, Syrian and other refugees and local communities is set to launch in Stirling.
Article Source: The Trojan Women Project
Last Updated: 30 March 2026 15:42
Image: Trojans (2019) Pleasance EICC Edinburgh Festival Fringe
A new drama and storytelling project bringing together Ukrainian, Afghan, Sudanese, Syrian and other refugees and local communities will launch in Stirling on Friday, April 10, 2026, as part of the national Trojans UK programme and building on the work of the Trojan Women Project, which has been creating therapeutic drama and storytelling programmes with refugees since 2013. The workshops will run every Friday, until the end of July.
This six-month oral heritage drama therapy project in Stirling will bring around 30 refugees and asylum seekers together for a series of creative drama and writing workshops. The workshops will take place at Hillview Community Centre, recently refurbished by Stirling Council.
Using Euripides’ anti-war tragedy, ‘The Trojan Women’ as a creative framework, participants weave their own stories of displacement, survival and rebuilding life in a new country into the play.
The workshops will culminate in a public performance at the premier cultural hub, MacRobert Arts Centre, University of Stirling, in September, performed and co-written by the participants and directed by Stirling-based Ukrainian actor/director Vira Klymkovetska and Offie-nominated Scottish director William Stirling.
The project combines psycho-social support, creative expression and public storytelling, aiming to help participants overcome isolation and trauma while building connections with local communities, and the Stirling workshops will provide a welcoming and supportive environment for participants, including free hot meals, childcare and travel allowances, ensuring that refugees and asylum seekers can take part fully regardless of financial or family pressures.
Co-director and actor, Vira Klymkovetska,says: “When the war started in Ukraine, I lost the opportunity to work in the theatre. Moving to Scotland with two young children as a single mother made it impossible to continue my acting career at that time. But living in Stirling, I found a new dream: to bring high-quality contemporary theatre to this wonderful Scottish community.
“It makes me happy to help people unlock their creative potential and show Scotland their captivating stories of dignity, resilience, and the desire to make the world a better place, starting with oneself.”
The Stirling pilot is delivered in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Creative Scotland, Stirling Council, the University of Stirling, the MacRobert Arts Centre and Forth Valley Welcome, and with support from the National Lottery Community Fund and the Post Code Lottery. The workshops are being led creatively by a team of professional refugee actors and producers, with food by a Syrian chef, and monitored by a Syrian psychologist, providing paid professional opportunities alongside community participation.
The project is creating an oral heritage archive which will be lodged with the University of Stirling, capturing refugee testimonies through recorded interviews and a podcast series titled “Why Am I In Your Country?”, which will give refugees a platform to explain the journeys that brought them to the UK.
The Stirling pilot project is a nine-month Trojans UK programme in Scotland, gathering stories, building a new theatrical script and preparing for a future production at the Edinburgh Festival.
Award-winning Scottish filmmaker and Offie-nominated theatre director William Stirling and filmmaker and journalist Charlotte Eagar, co-producers for The Trojan Women Project, say: “Our aim is to create a model that can be replicated across the UK, combining theatre, oral history and community engagement to amplify refugee voices while strengthening understanding and connections between newcomers and host communities.”
“Our project enables refugees to share their experiences directly with the communities around them. Through theatre, storytelling and oral history, participants can transform personal experiences of displacement into powerful public narratives.”
Iryna, a previous participant in the project, also described the impact of the workshops: “Trojans is a magic that allows one to go out of one's own bubble, tell one's story to others, acquire new experience in acting, communicating and interacting with people of different nationalities. I hope that this project will help refugees overcome trauma and send a strong message to the world that wars and violations of human rights have always been harmful to humanity and to women.”
The Stirling project follows last year’s Offie-nominated Hecuba: Why Am I In Your Country? and the highly successful Trojans UK Hounslow project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery Community Fund, which hosted weekly workshops for up to 120 refugee participants, created a public performance at Hounslow Arts Centre of Trojans: Why Am I In Your Country? and gathered more than thirty oral history interviews for a public archive at West London’s Gunnersbury Park Museum.
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