Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation

This project investigates the effects of music, sound and storytelling in conflict and post-conflict communities and their distribution through digital media activities. Comparative case studies in the Middle East, Brazil and Northern Ireland serve as a basis for evaluating how sound is used to articulate experiences of violence, to support narratives of resistance and to promote peace building. Together with community partners, an interdisciplinary team from the arts, humanities and social sciences will bring together complementary methodologies to address critical questions in conflict research, music and the arts. We will consider common patterns of response and engagement across different conflict settings and identify how participatory music, sound art and performance can influence political agendas and feed into policy-making. The conceptual frameworks of resistance, intervention and reconciliation highlight specific conflict conditions through which we analyse the effects of sound art activities on community participants and interpret their conflict narratives. This research also addresses a constantly evolving global security environment in which music and the arts are increasingly being recognized as a means of healing or an arena for shared dialogue. However, there is still a gap in scholarship in addressing exactly how participatory and community-led approaches to music, sound and storytelling are being used to mediate and articulate the politics of conflict for wider policy outcomes.

The project is organized into three Work Streams (WS) to allow for fieldwork-based case studies and cross-cutting sound and ethnographic research methods. WS1, 'Sounding Resistance', considers a) the impact of rap and the effect of counter-narratives to ISIS and b) the transformations generated by digital storytelling interventions among Syrian refugees through the work of the Al Salam School on the Turkish-Syrian border. WS2, 'Sound Interventions in Peacebuilding', is conducted through revisiting a participatory sound art project in the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro during military occupation in 2014 and then evolving its methodologies within a new sound art installation focusing on music interventions in Northern Ireland, finally re-exhibiting the new installation in Rio. WS3, 'Sounding Reconciliation', analyses the effectiveness of a) participatory music-making techniques and social media practices employed by the NGO, Musicians Without Borders in both Palestine and NI, and the impact of b) storytelling and performance methods in theatre on audiences and directors in the wake of the NI Good Friday Agreement (1998). Each work stream focuses on a particular music, sound and storytelling practice situated within three regions of the globe impacted by distinct conflict and post-conflict conditions. Local analysis and ethnographies will provide qualitative and quantitative insights into the effectiveness of the various projects, while comparative research will allow us to draw parallels, highlight differences and identify common patterns of responses to conflict.

The research is conducted in partnership with organizations that play significant roles in establishing music and arts activities in three conflict regions (i.e. Al Salam school, Turkey, Museu da Maré, Brazil, Musicians without Borders [Palestine and NI] and four theatres [NI]. These partnerships are fundamental for engaging with existing local knowledge and best practices while ensuring the research reaches audiences beyond academia. The research will produce important insights for arts organisations seeking to understand the importance of digital media as they address the effects and legacies of violence, and for policy makers in appraising how music, sound and storytelling play a role in narratives of resistance, as well as in processes of transformation and reconciliation.

The impact of this project lies in the alternatives offered to those who are seeking to avert national security threats, while establishing the value of the arts in promoting creative, resilient and empathic responses to conflict/post-conflict situations. Our research questions are driven by our engagements with organisations in each work stream who are concerned to understand how music, sound and digital media can transform experiences of violence and who are seeking to influence wider policy agendas. The outcomes will have benefits for practitioners beyond these partner organisations by impacting upon the responses of participants, activists and political stakeholders as they engage with various forms of conflict transformation and peacebuilding from resistance to reconciliation. Our stakeholders and beneficiaries comprise the following key user groups, refugee youth, community leaders, exhibition staff and the public, arts/media practitioners and policy-makers, humanitarian and government organisations, as follows:

i). Youth, community leaders and the public: In WS1, the research will benefit communities faced with specific iterations of violence and conflict, by generating new insights into their experiences of conflict. Syrian refugee youth involved in the Turkish arts-media intervention will gain practical skills in sound and media production as they create responses to violence. In WS2, the Museu da Maré in Brazil and Cultúrlann in Derry will use newly created sound-art installations to showcase memories and experiences of conflict to audiences in both places. In WS 3, Musicians Without Borders [Palestine and Northern Ireland] and theatre practitioners [NI] anticipate using the results to enhance the efficacy of their creative practices locally and internationally when designing arts interventions.

ii). Arts/media practitioners and policy makers will gain insights into how communities use music, storytelling and digital media to respond to and counter security threats, as well as to transform national memories and discourses of violence. By mapping the effects of music and storytelling with arts and media practitioners and their organisations, the research aims to reveal forms of empowerment that impact attitudes and behaviours leading towards greater democracy in community governance and leadership. The results will be presented in 6 briefing papers and a report on guidelines for sound arts interventions in conflict and post-conflict settings to be available for each region's respective arts' policy-making bodies and networks (see Pathways to Impact).

iii). We will seek further impact funding as the project progresses to engage humanitarian and government organisations with our findings of music, sound and digital media in conflict settings. We include government representatives in Defence and Security, international diplomacy, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well as in Arts and Culture who have portfolios relating to domestic and external-international threats (WS1), shared futures in post-conflict communities (WS2, WS3) and policy-makers involved in the Home Office, policing services and local government who may draw upon new approaches to transforming community cohesion through the effects of arts interventions.

The research impact has the potential to enhance the quality of life of communities through influencing policy-making around the use of creative practices in well-being. As the organisations have been instrumental in the research design of the project and are integrated as a user panel throughout, the benefits of the research will be realised during fieldwork and in the briefing papers and impact activities from years 2-4. The expected benefits of the project are considerable in that this project adopts an integrated approach to arts, humanities and social science methods, and to the assessment of their impacts and benefits across conflict and post-conflict contexts.