Imagining the Common Ground: Utopian Thinking and the Overcoming of Resentment and Distrust

This programme of leadership activities and research will address the over-arching Global Uncertainties strategic aim of 'security for all in a changing world' primarily through engagement with the Ideas and Beliefs core area. The working hypothesis of the proposed programme is that 'security for all in a changing world' is dependent on the capacity to imagine a common ground and a common humanity, which is in turn dependent on the ability to overcome resentment and distrust, and on the ability to deploy a certain utopian form of thinking. What will be explored is the role of prospective and projective thinking in advancing social justice and social cohesion, as well as its potential for impeding such.
A key aim of the programme is to provide opportunities for synergies under the Global Uncertainties scheme in areas of existing and emergent research, and to identify the mutual concerns of this work, especially with respect to the question of understanding how human capabilities may be drawn on to enhance security. In particular, research activities will serve to focus attention on the following topics of enquiry: cross-cultural understandings of extremism, especially from the perspective of youth culture and with respect to its potential common ground; the potential loss of faith in humanity occasioned by violent sectarian conflict and forms of post-conflict rehabilitation that aim to rebuild trust and strengthen social resilience; perceived forms of political negligence in relation to social autonomy and welcome and unwelcome forms of state intervention; the role that popular culture and community arts initiatives are able to play in transforming the disadvantaged sectors of developing societies and new democracies through drawing on local resources and advancing social and economic inclusiveness, together with the role played by community leaders in this regard; the destructive and constructive aspects of utopian thinking with respect to questions of idealism, social expectations and aspirations, and the grounds for consensual action.
The proposed programme of research will be carried out through a series of Global Uncertainties events (a conference and workshops) entailing public sector involvement, together with practice-based research in the form of creative projects, fieldwork and the setting up of networks. The first of the two creative projects consists of the making of a documentary film on post-conflict rehabilitation in Beirut that will be of wider significance to the MENA region. The second of the two creative projects concerns the scripting and mounting of a UK-based hip hop performance offering youth perspectives on questions of extremism, political distrust and pathways to justice. The fieldwork entails studies of community arts-based social initiatives, together with filmed portraits of inspiring role models, in the locations of Cape Town, Cairo and Delhi, in order to facilitate opportunities for knowledge exchange. Related to this, the project will serve to set up a network of experts on popular culture in the Middle East and Africa in the form of a cultural academy comprised of UK academics and their international counterparts, together with practitioners in the areas of the arts and new media. It is envisaged that this network will serve as a resource base for cultural organizations, NGOs and charities interested in the role of the popular imagination in instigating forms of social mobilization and receptive to new forms of cultural diplomacy. This project will also serve to foster collaborations between universities in the UK, the MENA region and Southern Africa through pilot workshops that will serve to activate the network.
The PI will be assisted by an early career Research Associate for the first two years of the project and the programme will further lead to edited collections of essays and a monograph on literary attempts to establish the common ground of cultures in the Middle East.

1. DSTL and the All Parliamentary Group for Global Uncertainties stand to benefit with respect to how the research addresses the ways in which human capabilities and local cultural resources may be drawn on with respect to conflict prevention and post-conflict resolution. Regarding post-conflict resolution, the documentary on rebuilding trust in Beirut will demonstrate how communities confront the question of their own post-conflict rehabilitation (this being of relevance not only to Beirut but across the contemporary MENA region). Regarding conflict prevention, the programme will offer insights into how the popular imagination responds to perceived situations of negligence and to forms of intervention relating to such. The context for this is both the Arab Spring and the London riots.

2. The FCO also stands to benefit from the above, but more particularly with respect to the following strands of the programme. The research into prospective, anticipatory and utopian forms of thinking, while distinct from horizon scanning as a predictive form of thinking, is related to such with respect to understanding popular forms of mobilization and consensual action. The programme, through workshops and related outputs, will also serve to identify the difference between destructive and constructive forms of utopianism, in relation to both extremist formations and activism in the wake of the Arab Spring. Furthermore, the monograph on Mezzaterra literature will serve as a means of disseminating longer term progressive thinking around establishing a cultural common ground in the Middle East and as well as between Britain and the Middle East.

3. The research will benefit organisations that are committed to using culture, especially the arts, as a means of establishing trust and promoting peace. In particular, it will establish partnership possibilities with the British Council and, more widely, it will create a resource base comprised both of expertise on global popular culture and of links with its practitioners, especially in the MENA region and Southern Africa. It will do this through the setting up of the proposed cultural academy for new and fragile democracies. In addition to the British Council, this resource base is of potential use to UNESCO, NGOs (such as International Alert) and charities (such as Firefly International).

4. The research activities will serve to network creative community centres in New Delhi, especially the Sarai Centre, Cape Town and Cairo with respect to knowledge exchange.

5. The research stands to benefit galleries and arts organisations in the UK. It has the potential to build on forms of collaboration or forms of consultancy already established to date (including with Wasafiri, the October gallery, El Sawy Culturewheel, Turner Contemporary) while particular attention will be given to the new affiliation between the PI's department and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Opportunities to connect GU research with the ICA programme will be sought as appropriate.

6. Audiences will be reached through feeding into channels provided by the above the above for talks or performance, and also through film festivals and screenings. The collaboration with director Mai Masri, whose award-winning work has been widely screened at documentary festivals, will serve to identify and provide access to internationally significant platforms. The collaboration with film-maker Albert Chimedza will also provide access to users of the filmed portraits through the EU Ambassador in Zimbabwe.

6. Special screenings and/ or dvds will be arranged for interested policy makers. Relevant material will be offered to DFID and potentially discussed at a breakfast meeting with particular emphasis on the effective targeting of aid.

7. The work on trust, on therapeutic communities and on the psychology of poverty stands to be of benefit to mental health professionals: SLP (Lebanon); The Freud Museum (London).