Post-Conflict Participatory Arts: Socially Engaged Development

This book investigates the power of art to enhance human development and to initiate positive social change for individuals and societies recovering from conflict.

Interventions aimed at reinforcing social justice and bringing communities together after conflict are often accused of being top-down, or failing to consider all groups and contexts within a society. The use of participatory arts can help to address these challenges by fostering community engagement, social cohesion, influencing public policy, and ultimately, advancing social justice. Arts-based methods can be particularly effective at reaching youth communities, providing voice and political agency to young people who are often not given a platform. Situated at the intersection of participatory arts, social and epistemic justice, this book brings together case studies from across the world to reflect on best practice for the use of bottom-up, participatory, co-produced, and co-designed arts processes in conflict settings.

This book provides an important guide to the role that arts can play in addressing epistemic injustice and contributing to social justice and human development. As such, it will be of interest to international development and arts practitioners, policy makers, and to students and researchers across participatory arts, youth studies, international development, social justice, and peace and conflict studies.

Faith Mkwananzi is a Researcher with the SARChI Chair in Higher Education and Human Development at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Her research centres on education, migration, and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has interests in the capability approach, as well as educational entrepreneurship and collaborative stakeholder engagement. She has been working on youth projects focusing on choices, opportunities, and aspirations. She also has experience using creative, participatory arts-based methods, including digital storytelling and photovoice with young people in less resourced communities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Most of her research includes collaborations with NGOs, civic, and community-based organisations.

F. Melis Cin is Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster University, UK. She is a feminist researcher with a particular interest in exploring the relationship between education and international development. She investigates how education can be used as a peace-building tool in conflict zones and employs socially engaged art interventions as a way to understand the local meanings of peace in formal and informal education settings.