Exploring Resilience in South Sudan through an Arts Based Curriculum

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South Sudan is a country internationally characterised by its humanitarian crisis. 7 million people are in need of aid, and in March 2018, 5.3 million people - nearly half the population - were estimated to now face hunger. According to Mercy Corp (2018) 1 million people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity. Compared with the same time last year, this number reflects a 40 percent increase in the population facing severe food insecurity in the post-harvest season. South Sudan is among the highest internationally for prevalence of sexual violence towards women and girls. Whilst conflict has intensified violence against women from non partners, levels of intimate partner abuse has also risen sharply. Therefore the impact of the conflict needs to be understood as gendered. This image of starving, abused masses set against a backdrop of corruption and political violence dominates outsider perceptions and prompts the usual external 'western expert' driven response. The international development community in Juba is highly visible to such an extent that local forms of expression and activism are almost completely silenced. Yet Juba hosts in June its third film festive in which the country's rich artistic and cultural heritage will be on show under the headline 'Keeping Hope Alive'. Post development critiques of development evidence over and over how the mistakes of the past just reproduce themselves particularly at times of acute crisis. More space must be given to new innovative, creative ways of understanding what resilience means in the South Sudan context. Art communities in South Sudan have been channeling their creativity into dialogues exploring critical concepts such as peace, resilience and sustainability. However, as it currently stands these narratives have not been captured in research and do not feed into humanitarian discourses. This problematic context will be, at least partly addressed, by the creation of a new network that brings humanitarian actors into dialogue with university students and artists who specialise in verbal arts. The University of Juba currently has 10,000 students. University education in South Sudan as a colonial enterprise has not integrated local cultures into the curriculum at all. A prior oral history project coordinated by the Co-I (RL) revealed a great disconnect between "local cultures" / mother tongue education and the function of a university education in this setting. The workshop model we propose to develop through this network will represent a decolonialised alternative to explore the core concepts of humanitarianism, namely security, peace and resilience. This network will use the teaching of story telling as its core activity. Artist mentors will facilitate workshops with university students and humanitarian actors who will be encouraged to use this medium to reflect on what resilience means at different levels and for different groups of the population including the most vulnerable (women, children and the disabled). Network members will create their own stories based on their experiences of working and living in South Sudan. Additionally the story-tellers will contribute narratives from historical and community heritage. These stories will be placed into a digital archive and analysed for what they reveal about the different positions held by network members. We believe that this new network will be the beginning of addressing glaring gaps, silences and paradoxes at various levels; academic and humanitarian discussions on what resilience really means and make a vibrant, relevant contribution to the learning of university students. It will also support intercultural sharing and forms of peace building utilising new capacity that will be left by the network in students. Lastly, it will offer the humanitarian community a bridge into understanding the deep rooted experiences of conflict endured by South Sudanese people particularly the most vulnerable.