PhotoVoice as an educational tool for intercultural learning and peacebuilding between Forcefully Displaced Populations and Host community youth

Global numbers of Forcefully Displaced Persons (FDPs) is rising, with the majority being hosted by Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC), which can exacerbate the economic and social challenges these countries face while compounding tensions between FDPs and the host communities as they have to share scarce resources. Efforts to reduce conflict center largely on providing humanitarian aid, vocational training, and expanding the provision of welfare services, underplaying the importance of promoting peace, dialogue and intercultural learning between the groups. This network aims to address this challenge by using photography as an educational tool and photograph artefacts as a teaching and learning resource to evaluate the potential of photovoice and visual story telling as an informal learning platform for fostering peaceful relations between the communities and easing sustainable integration of FDPs. The overarching aim is to understand how visual arts and photography training can have a redistributive effect in reducing inequalities perpetuated by intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, language, sexuality, and nationality and in mitigating tensions for peace-building through comparative research in South Africa, Turkey and Uganda. These countries host millions of FDPs. The consortium of these countries provides an enriching multi-sited context to explore the role of photography as an educational tool and the participatory methodology as an informal learning space for establishing a culture of peace, exchange of cultural knowledge, and intercultural learning.

The participatory and bottom up programs that could foster capacity building, reconciliation and societal transformation between FDPs and host communities are often ignored for the sake of economic concerns. The central aim of the network is to bring researchers, policy makers, NGOs, local actors, photographers, practitioners, FDPs and host community members to discuss photography and arts based participatory methods in providing an informal learning education opportunity for peace that could be enhanced through policy and practice. The network assembles expertise in education, photography, conflict and forced migration. The co-applicants in each country have a track record in policy-relevant research and are well networked nationally and regionally with academic, and policy actors. The network will interact through a mix of virtual and face-to-face means.

Our hypothesis is that arts training and activities conducted in an informal setting can be used for community building, and learning to live together can make important contribution to the welfare of both FDPs and host communities. To assess whether and how such benefits may be occurring and what are the best visual arts practices of adopting such a methodology, the co-applicants first have to map existing data and literature in order to gain a much clearer picture of the dynamics of FDPs and host communities and ways of improving dialogue and participatory methodologies. The outcome will be the use of visual arts as a medium to learning to live together, understand cultural diversity, ways of preventing discrimination and inequalities. We will develop a series of collaborative bids to GCRF and other funders. The network will innovate by dialogue and photography based participatory action research and academic and practitioner networks to meet the learning needs FDPs and host communities as well as local actors who engage with them. Theoretically, the network recognizes that visual arts are a powerful tool for promoting human development, equipping people with necessary learning and capabilities to access sustainable livelihood assets that go beyond income generation. It can also include non-material aspects of education such as: well-being, support peace-building, self-development, equity, social relations based on respect and equality, and positive and negative freedoms for a life with dignity.

The network will bring together researchers from multiple disciplines, photographers, representatives of art galleries and non-academic stakeholders from public, private, and third sectors in South Africa, Turkey and Uganda who will be the immediate target for impact activities. The network aims to establish a discussion on arts funding. To this extent, representatives of galleries (such as Istanbul Modern) will be brought into the discussion. The final report will set out an impact agenda for the GCRF around the potential for photovoice as a methodology to support social integration of FDPs into hosting communities. The inception phase will develop impact strategies for each country as well as the UK and internationally. This will identify stakeholders and a theory of change, which will lead to a series of linked strategies. The likely beneficiaries and benefits are:

1. Policy-makers & NGOs in the case study countries: The benefits will be greater awareness of the relations, inequalities, and interaction between FDPs and host communities, a better understanding of the cross-cultural relations involved, and knowledge about how best to realise the potential for knowledge transfer and local capacity building to support peacebuilding efforts. Policy-makers working with FDP populations in source countries who will benefit from knowledge about FDP and host community relations; this will be achieved through policy reports in the local language targeting the policy makers, through the in-country advisory group, workshops, and receptions during the lifetime of the project. More importantly, the network will try to show that culture and visual arts can play a significant role in the process of integrating refugees and bring people together and increase vulnerable communities' participation in cultural and societal life by fostering the formation of inclusive cultural and institutional structures. It aims to raise awareness about the extent of collaboration between the fields of visual arts, forced migration, and education.

2. The FDPs, host communities & local actors in the case study countries: mutual cultural understanding between FDPs and host community groups and local actors can be a successful investment for creating sustainable livelihoods. Arts and culture are powerful media for bolstering peacebuilding and steering communities to express themselves peacefully. Like many forms of arts, photography will provide an important educational tool for enhancing communication between communities and local actors. It will highlight the importance of including vulnerable populations in the arts and culture. By scoping the knowledge exchange needs, we intend to explore the possibilities of co-designing training materials in future bids to enhance the potential of methodology for future use by local actors.


3. Academics, photographers & representatives of galleries: This project also aims to integrate local and national art councils and photographers into the project with the aim of possible exhibitions of photographs at a local and national level. All three universities have fine or visual arts related departments to benefit from in terms of expertise and expanding the contacts and building networks to improve visual arts practices as an educational tool for intercultural learning as well as to promote it among disadvantaged populations (such as FDPs, or in conflict-stricken areas). It aims to raise awareness about the use of visual arts in different areas and with different populations and aims to discuss how the methodology developed in this network can be taken forward.