Conserving Cultural Heritage: The Resilience of Forcibly Displaced Syrian Artisans in Jordan

Prior to Syria's devastating civil war and escalating refugee crisis at least 12% of Syria's gross domestic product was generated by cultural heritage crafts (Jordan Times Online, 2016). Yet by 2015, approximately 80% of these artisans had left their trade, and fled to neighbouring states in search of safety and security (Jordan Times Online, 2016) resulting in a grave threat to Syria's cultural heritage. However, whilst there remains a marginal community of artisans in Syria, the forcibly displaced Syrian artisans in Jordan are reviving their cultural heritage crafts by operating in Jordan's informal economy and adopting economic and cultural survival strategies to create their own pathways and networks to provide a livelihood for themselves and their families. The vast majority of Syrian refugees are living in extreme poverty earning below the Jordanian poverty line equivalent to US$ 96 per person per month (UNHCR, 2016). They are living with minimal prospects for economic, social and cultural development and integration.

This project addresses Jordan's development challenges arising from the burgeoning influx of forcibly displaced Syrians by exploring the resilience, vulnerabilities and identities of the forcibly displaced Syrian artisans residing in Jordan since the war in Syria erupted in 2011. Doing so will help us answer questions about the socio-political impact of engaging in cultural heritage crafts on the forcibly displaced Syrian community in Jordan, the impact of cultural appropriation through 'made in Jordan' Syrian cultural heritage products on the conservation of the Syrian cultural heritage by the forcibly displaced artisans, and the impact of displacement and the arising marginalised masculinities, on the resilience of neo-patriarchal displaced Arab communities. Indeed, focusing on their resilience will help us to understand how the forcibly displaced artisans overcome social, economic and political vulnerabilities, and thus, how they respond to economic and social upheaval. In doing so, we contribute to the rapidly growing resilience discourse which has largely ignored the resilience of forcibly displaced artisans, and forcibly displaced Syrians.

Mixed methods will be used to collect data from multidisciplinary stakeholders and 80 forcibly displaced Syrian artisans residing in Jordan. In addition, the project has three capacity building components. The first is to enhance Jordan's social research capacity by training postdoctoral researchers, and the second advances the largely misunderstood social enterprise model by training trainers to deliver a social enterprise start up programme for forcibly displaced artisans. The third focuses on the forcibly displaced artisans by offering them social enterprise start up training and mentoring. Stakeholder engagement is a key focus of the project and thus an introductory event and dissemination event will be held in Amman - Jordan. The introductory event will help to alleviate any suspicions about the project's aims, and the dissemination event will focus on research, practice and policy development for the forcibly displaced.

The project will be realised through the interdisciplinary strengths of the team of investigators and project partners. Haya Al-Dajani (Principle Investigator) brings a gender, enterprise and displacement expertise, whilst Geoff Wilson (Co-Investigator) is an expert on resilience and Marta Rabikowska (Co-Investigator) is an expert in the creative industries and visual and sensorial methods. The Jordanian Partner the King Hussein Foundation Information and Research Centre is an internationally recognised centre focused on socio-economic planning and transformation through research, advocacy and knowledge transfer. The second Jordanian Partner - Tiraz is a unique non-profit cultural foundation and cultural heritage research centre dedicated to promoting and preserving the threatened Arab cultural heritage.

Whilst we expect the heritage skills and crafts to alleviate the poverty of artisans and their families, we don't know how the informal economy conditions are impacting upon the quality and authenticity of the products, their production, marketing, branding, and pricing. We also don't know the socio-political impact of engaging in cultural heritage crafts on the forcibly displaced Syrians in Jordan, nor about the impact of cultural appropriation through 'made in Jordan' Syrian cultural heritage products. Indeed, other than the fact that these artisans are male due to the traditional and historical masculinisation of this sector with men passing down expert skills from one generation to the next for at least the last five centuries, we know very little about this group. Thus, the non-academic impact of this project responds to the objectives of the GCRF and the ODA in the following ways:

1. Capacity building:
a. Training and mentoring 20 of the forcibly displaced Syrian artisans interviewed in this project, in social enterprise creation. The training and mentoring will highlight how registered social enterprises can help the artisans to organise their sector, support their work, protect their working rights, protect them from exploitation, and give their products enhanced trade rights amongst other benefits.
b. Training six Jordanian trainers from our project partners in social enterprise creation and mentoring. This training will be held in Plymouth - a best practice social enterprise hub. These trainers will contribute to the delivery of the training and mentoring to the artisans in Jordan.
c. Training four post-doctoral Jordanian social researchers in interviewing vulnerable communities, active listening methods, research protocols, and Syrian cultural heritage crafts and skills. This will make a solid contribution towards developing Jordan's social research capacity.

2. Knowledge Transfer:
a. a clarification of the social enterprise model and its potential contribution to the Jordanian economy.
b. the creation of a social enterprise creation and mentoring training toolkit for displaced artisans available in Arabic and English.

3. Policy Development: Through the stakeholder engagement event and the dissemination event, the attending governmental and non-governmental stakeholders will network with each other and with the forcibly displaced Syrian artisans, and to deliberate the overall results of the proposed project to determine policy and action pathways for supporting the forcibly displaced communities in the Arab world more effectively and efficiently. Please see the Pathways to Impact document for further elaboration.

Through the combined expertise of the project investigators and partners, the direct engagement with stakeholders (see Appendix 1 for examples) and the forcibly displaced Syrian artisans, and the social enterprise capacity building, training and mentoring, we anticipate a holistic model of research and impact that will have significant policy and practice outcomes that will influence the social and economic development and welfare of Jordan and its forcibly displaced populations. Our holistic model will be available to guide future research, policy and practice for newly arriving forcibly displaced groups in various host nations. This model, plus a detailed project report encompassing the proposed actions and recommendations arising from our research, will be made available to all stakeholders attending the dissemination event at the end of the project (see Appendix 1), and will be disseminated to all local and regional agencies supporting forcibly displaced Syrians and others in Jordan and elsewhere in the region (see Appendix 1 for examples). Please see the Pathways to Impact section of this application for further details.