Creative Writing and Translation for Peace

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'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.