Belonging and learning: Using co-produced arts methodologies to explore youth participation in contexts of conflict in Kenya, Uganda and the DRC

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The proposed network will explore the potential contribution of arts-based methods to research concerning education provision in situations of conflict and protracted crisis. Researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Makerere University (MU) and PEDER will collaborate with local artists in Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to bring together displaced populations of young people with teachers, social workers and the local education officials who make the policy and practice decisions that affect them as part of three networking meetings. The proposed network will explore the potential of different forms of artistic expression as a way of overcoming power imbalances and communication difficulties, and promoting mutual learning between stakeholders at different levels of the education system. It aims to re-think displaced young people's experience using artistic expression, supporting community artists to be co-investigators and encouraging academics to decentre their knowledge production practice to prioritise local knowledge and coproduce information using performance, poetry, oral traditions and non-linguistic forms of knowledge rather than words.In Kenya, Dr Su Corcoran (MMU) will collaborate with Mike Wamaya, an award winning ballet teacher, to facilitate coproduction of knowledge about street-connected young people's experiences of education, through the medium of dance. The Uganda meeting, which will explore education provision for refugees, will be organised by Dr Virginie Tallio (MU) and illustrator Charity Atakunda. In DRC, Thomas D'Aquin Rubambura (PEDER) will collaborate with Faustin Muliri Miruhu, a poet and playwright, to organise a workshop with street-connected young people who have been displaced by ongoing conflict in the country. The approach of the networking meetings, of using community artists as co-investigators and artistic expression to encourage stakeholders from various levels of the education sector to co-produce knowledge, aims to enable all participants to contribute through the performance art chosen for the session. Group making activities will encourage the participants to attune, listen to and debate with each other. In focusing on young people who are street-connected, internally displaced or refugees, the project takes an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral approach - exploring intersections of experience of these populations of young people as they gain access to and transition (back) into education. Displaced populations of young people such as these, problematise the boundaries between humanitarian and international development fields of research and practice, and potentially contribute useful perspectives to research into the provision of education in emergencies and translating Sustainable Development Goal 4 into practice in protracted situations of conflict and crisis. The project will be led by Corcoran, in collaboration with Prof. Kate Pahl (MMU) who specialises in using arts-based methods and work with community artists as co-investigators. Pahl will chair an initial planning meeting in Uganda that will bring the network's four key collaborators together with the three artists who will co-facilitate the networking meetings, to ensure that together, the networking meetings form an integrated whole that contributes to the aim of informing future research into education provision in situations of conflict and protracted crisis. A future planning meeting, after the networking meetings, will take place in Manchester UK, to reflect on the Networking Meetings and the art produced at each one. This art will be curated into a self-published book and a web-space that will showcase the learning that has taken place as part of the co-production process. In addition, this meeting will be used to develop a future research plan based on the local knowledge developed during the networking meetings that will translate into a bid for further funding.