Creative Writing and Translation for Peace

'Creative Writing and Translation for Peace' is a collaboration between the University of Bristol and Bakwa, a Yaoundé-based literary non-profit organisation founded in 2011 with the mission to open new spaces for the promotion of Cameroonian culture and arts. Working against the context of the 'Anglophone problem' in Cameroon, it seeks to engage young Cameroonian writers, translators and educators in the production of a bilingual anthology and study guide, with the aim of forging cross-boundary empathy and inter-lingual, inter-cultural and inter-ethnic solidarities.

This project extends impacts and research innovation developed through the AHRC/ESRC GCRF/PaCCS: Inter-Disciplinary Research Innovation Awards on Conflict and International Development funded project, 'Ugandan Youth and Creative Writing: New Perspectives on Conflict and Development'. It seeks to expand the findings of that project from a post-conflict situation to one in which conflict is ongoing; to move from monolingual to multilingual methods; and to build educational and creative capacity through literary translation. 'Creative Writing and Translation for Peace' will deliver social and cultural impact to Cameroon, currently listed as a LMIC on the DAC list of ODA recipients, contributing to SDGs 4, 10, 16 and 17.

The project's key beneficiaries will be young writers and translators in Cameroon; educational practitioners based in Cameroon; literary and cultural initiatives, particularly those interested in creative writing and translation and policy makers and third sector organisations in Cameroon. Young people from Cameroon's Anglophone and Francophone regions will be trained and mentored through the process of producing short fictional stories about everyday life in Cameroon under conflict. These stories will then be used as the basis for training and mentoring emerging literary translators, leveraging knowledge exchange and collaboration with a newly-constituted literary translation advisory network. Educators and educational charities will be invited to a series of focus groups to develop bilingual teaching materials from these outputs, all of which will be published together by Bakwa in a new bilingual anthology of Cameroonian fiction. The anthology will be distributed to educators, practitioners and policy makers, all of whom will be invited to a grand launch in Yaoundé. The insights derived from these activities, particularly those which pertain to the use of creative methodologies as a means of promoting peace and solidarity in situations of conflict, will be published in a brief report that will be prepared with the assistance of Policy Bristol.

All aspects of the project have been developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, particularly through a process of co-design and co-production with Bakwa, based on their organisational needs. It builds on extant scoping and feasibility surveys on literary industries, training provision and translation initiatives in the country, undertaken over a period of three months and funded via the University of Bristol's GCRF pump-priming award.

'Creative Writing and Translation for Peace' will deliver impacts to a wide range of beneficiaries:

1. The young people who participate in the creative writing workshops will benefit from developing their skills and confidence as writers. They will gain exposure to high-level training which will enable them to bolster their own agency as active citizen-participants in Cameroonian public life, creating new publics and platforms for self-expression. All of the writers involved in the project will be invited to the launch event, where they will be able to gain experience in public performance and develop their creative and professional networks.

2. The wider translation community in Cameroon will benefit in two main ways: first, from the project's aims to build capacity for creative writing and, second, from the creation of the translation advisory network. As an ostensibly bilingual country, translation plays a vital role in Cameroonian society and is essential to forging solidarities across the artificial divides inherited from colonialism. While numerous technical and scientific translation societies exist, there is not, at present, any capacity for literary or creative translation in the country, despite clear demand from students. This project will therefore enable the development of Cameroon's translation sector through the introduction of literary and creative practice. The translation advisory network, moreover, will provide a sustainable and robust structure for the sharing of best practice amongst emerging literary translators and the co-creation of teaching and mentoring schemes for literary translators.

3. Bakwa, in particular, and other literary initiatives in Cameroon more generally, will benefit from the increased capacity for creative and literary industries produced by the project. For Bakwa, the project will enhance the development of their publishing and translation arms, enabling them to access new publics and audiences and engage with a wider range of stakeholders. The empowerment of young people noted above, moreover, promises to deliver a larger and more sustainable pool of emerging writers to nurture and with whom to creatively produce.

4. Educators and third sector educational charities will benefit from their participation in the focus groups to develop the study guide and the educational materials developed therein. All focus group participants will receive free copies of the anthology for their professional use, and an e-version of the study guide will be freely distributed and available along with print copies.

5. Universities and schools will benefit from the development of the cultural and translation sectors. At present, there is little provision for formal training in creative writing or literary translation in Cameroon, despite heavy demand from students and practitioners. This project will benefit universities and schools by sharing its methodologies across its workshops and creating capacity through the literary translation advisory network. Our findings from 'Ugandan Youth and Creative Writing' indicate that young people overall suffer from dissatisfaction with the lack of creative spaces in education, which often feels distant from their lived realities. This lacuna has had a severe impact on the sustainability of the cultural sector. By leveraging the insights from literary activist work for the benefit of the university and schools sector, this project has the potential to intervene in this situation, offering one means of creating a pipeline for more robust and sustainable creative industries.

6. Academics working on conflict will benefit from the insights derived from this project and disseminated via the short policy report.

7. The general public will benefit from their ability to engage with debates around language and translation during the translation workshop, as well as the through engaging with the anthology itself.