Children of Political Violence: Imagining the Past and the Future from the Present

Children living in conflicted societies experience loss at a young age when they are still developing their own personalities, opinions and memories. These losses are particularly acute when they involve the death or disappearance of one or more parent. With time, childhood impressions of the missing parent(s) evolve and develop in dialogue with the social and political context and the individual's personal history. Our project, bringing together case studies from Argentina, Northern Ireland and Rwanda, asks how adults make sense of childhood bereavement. The processes that allow adult memories, opinions and political positions to form offer rich grounds for sensitive artistic exploration and intellectual consideration. Our research examines how and why adults remember their childhood losses and what avenues for justice they might find through artistic practices that move beyond traditional legal frameworks.

In all three countries violent political bereavement has marked whole generations. In Argentina the civil-military dictatorship that ruled between 1976 and 1983 forcibly disappeared around 30,000 people. For decades the creation of collective memories and the search for justice were lead mostly by family members of the disappeared but in recent years, with the reopening of trials, the state has become increasingly involved. In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide resulted in the deaths of between 800,000 and a million Rwandan Tutsis and their perceived Hutu and Twa sympathisers. Twenty years after genocide the Rwandan population is remarkably young and local gacaca courts have played a key role in processing crimes and generating collective memories. But as children of genocide reach adulthood they are beginning to explore their own creative mechanisms for reclaiming the past and working with loss. In Northern Ireland justice remains largely out of reach and the collision of persistent and resisted memories continues to shape lives. Following almost 4,000 deaths over a 30-year period, 'The Troubles' define societal responses to injustices and perceptions of other groups. As elsewhere, young people's memories of bereavement are interwoven with community and family histories.

Our project facilitates individual fieldwork exploring intergenerational memory and creative reformulations of parental loss in each country. It also, vitally, funds a collaborative research trip to Argentina where many of the remaining 14,000 children of the disappeared have been actively exploring their experiences through photography, literature, cinema and other art forms for decades. Our hypothesis is that Argentina's sophisticated record in this area offers a rich and profoundly important opportunity for cross-cultural exchange with Rwanda and Northern Ireland. As the initial academic bridge-builders all three investigators will facilitate a seminar with academics and artists in Buenos Aires to learn about their experiences. This is then developed through a workshop in Northern Ireland that includes artists and academic visitors from both Argentina and Rwanda. These activities will be recorded and shared through individual academic publications, a photoblog detailing the visit to Argentina and a co-authored article coming out of the workshop, alongside media work in Argentina, Northern Ireland and the UK. These mechanisms will disseminate our findings to wider academic, artistic, survivor and youth communities.

2014 offers a crucial moment to be reflecting on such issues. In Argentina, ongoing trials have kept reparation and justice on the political agenda and creative and informal mechanisms for exploring the past have developed in new and innovative directions. In Rwanda, the sudden closure of orphanages across the country poses a threat for the loss of institutional memory. And in Northern Ireland recent exhibitions such as "Art of the Troubles" at the Ulster Museum demonstrates renewed interest in creative responses to the past.

Children of Political Violence examines a sensitive issue - the way in which children whose parents were disappeared or killed through political violence re-examine their parental legacies as they reach adulthood. We will ensure enduring impact through strong networks, local partnerships and existing media relationships.

Beneficiaries of the project (and associated methods for inclusion and dissemination) include:

1) Artistic Communities
* In all countries artists will be introduced to related work from different cultural settings and the final seminar will offer the opportunity for direct ideas, knowledge and skills sharing between artists and academics across the three sites.
* In all countries, artistic projects will be publicised through our photojournal and subsequent publications.
* In Argentina artists (photographers, theatre practitioners, filmmakers and others) will be involved through interviews and project consultations.
* In Rwanda, photographers and theatre practitioners will be invited to reflect on the role of identity in their own work and their work with other young people.
* In Northern Ireland muralists and artists will be invited to articulate and reflect on the challenges of dealing with parental loss through political violence, during both fieldwork and the final seminar.

2) Young People and Youth Organisations
* In Argentina, young adults, children of disappeared, who have been engaged in reconstructing the past and demanding justice will benefit by sharing their expertise and by reflecting on their experiences of working through the past both under favourable and less favourable political conditions. Moreover, highlighting the work of artists of this generation in the photo-journal and academic writing will help forge a place for their experiences in English-language publications outside of the Latin American context. Individual interviews on chosen paths for memory construction and attitudes towards justice will also contribute to interviewees' sense of personal satisfaction and wellbeing.
* The Northern Ireland Youth Forum will benefit from this research in the following number of ways: 1) it will facilitate young adults bereaved and witness to political violence in Northern Ireland to engage with the project through contemplating the nexus of memory, justice and art; 2) It will offer a bridge between academic research, young people and art, thus providing long-term opportunities 3) through a range of focused activities with young people in Northern Ireland around memory, justice and art the project will facilitate exchange of knowledge and expertise.
* In Rwanda this exploratory project will, through needs identification and ongoing collaborations, lead to further funding applications to protect endangered archives held by Save the Children and the Imbabazi orphanage (amongst other orphanages).

3) Public Bodies in Northern Ireland.
The artistic expression of legacies of conflict raises questions over curatorship, management, cost and outcomes. In Northern Ireland, and based on Braniff's extensive ongoing ties, the CoI will engage with the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Community Relations Council, Community Foundation NI and the Museums Council to explore ongoing issues relating to the role of art and forms of curatorship.

4) Media Outlets and Public Audiences
To communicate our research to local and international audiences we will:
* seek to discuss our research live on La Tribu social community radio in Argentina
* pitch discussions and interviews to Detail TV and the BBC Politics in Northern Ireland
* submit proposals for a BBC Radio 3 or World Service documentary exploring artistic explorations of intergenerational memory
* publish a photojournal to directly engage with online audience both within and outside of academia, artistic communities and youth organisations.