Rwanda My Hope: Young people from Rwanda tell the story of their country through theatre and music. They explore how and why one million people were murdered in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 when the Government attempted to wipe out the Tutsi minority and the international community withdrew from the country.

While this production conveys the brutality of the conflict, it also highlights the universal lessons of individual responsibility. Looking forward but also addressing the past, the work of the Mashirika Youth Theatre group above all inspires hope for the future.

The Aegis Trust commissioned this production by Mashirika as a means of conveying the lessons of the Rwandan genocide within the Rwandan community. Since then, Rwanda My Hope has been performed across some of the provinces of Rwanda and forms part of the Outreach Education Programme of the Kigali Memorial Centre. This tour was organised by the Aegis Trust, a genocide prevention organisation based in the UK, and which also runs the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda. This tour is sponsored by the Pears Foundation and Boots Charitable

These photographs were taken at Rawlins Community College in Quorn, UK - the visit was part of an ongoing programme of work in the area developed and managed through Charnwood Arts (www.charnwoodarts.com) and was a partnership between the college, Charnwood Arts and Loughborough University.

Charnwood Arts and partners in the voluntary and statutory sectors have been working pro-actively in the areas of community relations and cross community work since 1976 - initially in schools and through performance based programmes and since 1991 through a wide range of community based projects and initiatives. We have actively worked with others through many different forms of participatory work to address and give expression to a multiplicity of issues through the arts and media. Since 2001 this has been co-ordinated under the banner of an arts led partnership called Connecting Communities.