Building Resilience Wellbeing and Cohesion in Displaced Societies Using Digital Heritage

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This project's overall objectives are: (i) to engage with the refugee (primarily Syrian) and mixed communities in and around Azraq in Jordan to enable them to discuss and use the digital heritage technologies and capacities developed in our AHRC-funded projects for their own well-being, including building mutual confidence and community cohesion, and (ii) to learn from the experience to develop approaches and good practices for wider uses of digital heritage resources to the benefit of refugee, displaced and conflict-affected communities in other regions. The project builds on the successes of the AHRC-funded Augmenting Jordanian Heritage (AJH) and Fragmented Heritage (Curious Travellers element) Projects, as well as drawing on aspects of the AHRC-funded Continuing Bonds Project. The follow-on funding reaches new audiences, namely refugee and communities in the Azraq region of Jordan, with an additional focus on the role of heritage in peacebuilding, thus representing a new interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology, digital heritage, peace studies and international development, working with local partners in Jordan. The project aims to use heritage as a further key tool in an innovative and creative way, to enhance a sense of place, explore the role and value of digital heritage in identity, community development and wellbeing in contexts of displaced and conflict-affected communities.,The project combines several recently established bodies of knowledge and practice from the areas of peace studies & international development, and archaeology & heritage, from which the CoI OG and PI, CoI AW and CoI KC have strong experience. Local community involvement will be embedded in the project from the outset, with our Jordanian collaborators involved in all stages of the project as they have been from inception. Members of this project team have substantial experience of conflict and conflict sensitive analyses and community building processes (CoI OG) and archaeological and heritage research in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East, including some field experience (PI; CoI KC). Our local partners are Jordan Heritage and Wafr Al Waqt, both local NGOs with track record of activities and engagement with local and refugee communities on issues of diverse tangible and intangible heritages. These local partners have fully contributed to, the development of this proposal; and the project will enhance their capacity for follow-on activities after the project ends.Five face-to-face project events are planned (4 in Jordan, 1 in the UK), to prepare the project, build capacity of local patterns, and to monitor, review and evaluate the project progress and process. A series of three community workshops will be established and facilitate processes of community engagement in and around Azraq on the relevance and values of diverse cultural heritages, and to guide and use digital heritage assets that are either already generated or will be created for this project. The project team will also meet at least monthly (via Skype), and more regularly when needed. The outputs include creation and use of the digital assets customized to community priorities and needs; establishment and conflict-sensitive facilitation of community dialogue and building processes; capacity-building; and evaluation and development and dissemination of targeted whitepapers for NGO, government and international use, based on the lessons learned and methodology we will develop through the project, and articles aimed at lay audiences (in English and Arabic).The project aims directly and primarily address UK Aid / ODA priorities. They further address identified strategic development goals and established United Nations regional response plans (United Nations, 2014) and to proposed policies for the use of heritage in sustainable development (UNESCO, 2015) each of which link directly to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015).