Farah Wardani is a theater actress, trainer, clown doctor, puppeteer, and applied theater practitioner.

A theater graduate with a DipHE, a BA in psychology, currently finishing her MA in Drama Therapy.

Farah is the director of Laban (a Lebanese theater based NGO). A Playback practitioner, trainer, actress, conductor and faculty member of the ASPT. She leads drama therapy workshops with Intisar Foundation targeting Arab women victim of war.

Farah trains and uses Theater of the Oppressed, Drama Therapy and other techniques with different communities and contexts as a medium for healing, social change and political activism.

In each episode of the Change-Maker Connect podcast,  In Place of War CEO Ruth Daniel will talk to a different grassroots change-maker from our network across the world, to hear their story, learn about art, their community and how they have used creativity to bring about social change. 

 In Place of War is a global organisation that uses creativity in places of conflict as a tool for positive change. We enable grassroots change-makers in music, theatre and across the arts to transform a culture of violence and suffering into hope, opportunity and freedom.

 Ruth Daniel is CEO, Artistic Director, Activist, Change-Maker, Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Manchester and proud owner of an old VW van.

As CEO of In Place of War, Ruth has led a diverse range of arts and peace-building initiatives across the globe. She has developed and implemented over a hundred cultural programmes in sites of conflict and disadvantage such as war zones, post war zones and areas of economic deprivation. She prepared numerous successful funding applications, recently receiving £1million AHRC research grant for a 3 year programme that will explore how grassroots organisations can create social change using art. 

From guitarist at the age of 8 to record label owner, band manager, fundraiser, international cultural activist, entrepreneur, educator, influential speaker (TEDx) to prestigious award winner within a national arena (Social Enterprise of the Year & Manchester Woman of Culture to name a couple), Ruth’s passion to empower people to build their own positive futures through creative entrepreneur programmes, the development of cultural spaces and artistic collaboration shows no boundaries in terms of fields of work.