In the name of the father: Otino Onywalo Ilum - docu-dance theatre and children born of war

In the Name of the Father develops and extends the artistic, cultural, societal and wellbeing impact activities of the AHRC network "Children Born of War - Past, Present and Future" (2011-14). This network brought together researchers and practitioners exploring the life courses of children born of war (CBOW) with particular emphasis on children fathered during and after World War II and children fathered during the LRA War in Northern Uganda since the mid 1980s. This research was designed to respond to a need, frequently-expressed by NGOs, policy-makers and CBOWs themselves, for an enhanced understanding of the challenges of CBOW; we followed an inclusive participatory approach that involved the study population alongside a range of partners, including NGOs, charities and policy-makers.

The key insights, including the enhanced understanding of the challenges faced by CBOW in different contexts, and the related insights into best approaches to improving their wellbeing and quality of life have inspired innovative, unexpected impact activities. These are based on the additional research outcome, namely that empowerment and capacity-building driven by an inclusive cross-sectoral research and impact design are key to optimising individual and societal outcomes. As a result, some of the initial network members, through sustained engagement with CBOW and an intensive academic-artistic partnership with a choreographer, Darrel Toulon, and his production company, the alpha group, are developing a programme of policy-relevant performance-oriented projects of empowerment for and with the CBOW.

Engaging with three specific groups of CBOW in Norway, Bosnia and Uganda, the project aims at capacity-building and empowerment through:
- transgenerational and international dialogue
- exploring creative alternative avenues of awareness raising
- amplifying the effectiveness of advocacy of CBOW through confidence building for engagement with media, policy-makers, service providers and politicians
- building strength through awareness of historical and political contextualisation of the CBOW experiences
- building capacity for CBOW to determine the direction of further engagement through networking opportunities and through supported, yet independent engagement with stakeholders.

This impact will be achieved through the development of a multi-chapter docu-dance theatre: In the Name of the Father, an academic-artistic endeavour led by the University of Birmingham and the alpha group (https://www.the-alpha-group.org/) linking CBOW from World War II and Bosnian children conceived of conflict-related rape in former Yugoslavia with children of abducted and forcibly enslaved women in Northern Uganda, through the creation of the Ugandan chapter of a dance performance based on testimony collected in a four-week workshop with CBOW in Aboke, Lango, Uganda.

The project is divided into three interlinked strands:
1) artistic-creative - historically and culturally contextualised narratives of CBOW form the basis of a theatre-dance production that, supported by professional actors, will be performed by the CBOW themselves.
2) transnational-transgenerational - through Skype-facilitated workshop sessions, CBOW of the three wars (former Yugoslavia, World War II and Uganda will work together in the artistic-creative activities and in developing advocacy activities in Acholi and Lango.
3) social-inclusion - inspired by the life-story narrative approach that forms the basis not only for the docu-dance theatre, through inclusion of cultural and faith leaders, the aim is to engage local communities, schools and cultural and faith groups public with the subject of the performance: fully inclusive post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction.

The launch of the project is extremely timely as UN Security Council Resolution 2467 (2019) has recently highlighted the need to support social, economic and emotional wellbeing of CBOW globally.

The principal beneficiaries from this project are:

- Children born of conflict-related sexual violence (CBCRSV)
- Advocacy groups working on social and emotional wellbeing of war-affected populations
- Cultural practitioners in the Global South and North
- School pupils in Lango, Acholi, and Kampala
- The general public attending documentary dance theatre (initially in Uganda and through inclusion of the filmed chapter in the European tour also audiences in the UK and Austria)
- Visitors of the photo documentary
- Academics and creative practitioners engaged in translating research into performance art

These groups will benefit from multiple forms of impact:

1) Social and emotional wellbeing
The original AHRC-funded research has evidenced that children born of conflict-related sexual violence suffer significant adversities, discrimination and stigmatisation and experience disproportionate disadvantages with regard to educational and subsequently economic opportunities compared with their peers in post-conflict societies.
The proposed project will improve emotional and social wellbeing by allowing CBCRSV to process their experiences, take ownership of their stories and use those stories to break the proverbial silence that they have expressed as adversely affecting their healing.

Further, by enhancing public understanding of their challenges (below (2)) social recognition of the life experiences of the witnessing group will enhance social wellbeing.

Finally, the creative writing, singing, dancing and acting training will equip this vulnerable group with essential transferable skills that will build capacity well beyond the In the Name of the Father performance.

2) Public understanding
Linked to the emotional and particularly the social wellbeing, the project will enhance public understanding of the social consequences of the LRA, debunking the myths of a victim-perpetrator dichotomy and it will introduce nuance in the appreciation both of the specific challenges of the reconstruction and reconciliation processes within contested legal, social, cultural and faith spaces. A particularly important element is also the communications of post-conflict experiences from the more strongly LRA-conflict-affected North of the country in the capital Kampala through engagement with the National Theatre. This will be enhanced by educational work with groups of secondary school children in Kampala, Lira, and Gulu. The accompanying photo documentary and the film for inclusion for the European tour of In the Name of the Father will further enhance the impact beyond Uganda.

3) Creative and artistic practice
At the core of the project lies a collaboration between academic researchers and performance artists and cultural practitioners, which aims to develop further the technique of documentary dance theatre as a means for vulnerable populations to discover a physical expression performed in tandem with their voices to tell their stories. The original research highlighted the need for CBOW to overcome their marginalisation by sharing their experiences and breaking the isolation that came with stigma and taboos around their parentage. The unforeseen collaboration with performance artists has led to powerful innovative ways of using the research in a transformative way to reach new audiences and new performers and bring this exciting new technique to a broader international community of practitioners. Participation in the workshops and production will have a transformative effect on the CBOW participants as well as on the artists and cultural practitioners involved with regard to their approach to producing and using testimony, with the potential for reflection on ethical and methodological questions related to working with testimony across different media.