The iBali (story) Network: Democratising knowledge through creative storytelling with youth who are excluded from learning in urban African Schools

在最近一次关于重振非洲艺术和人文学科的论坛上，非洲人文学科项目（AHP）强调了它们在确定非洲建立学术和应对社会挑战的方法方面可以作出的重要贡献。iBali网络关注的社会挑战是撒哈拉以南非洲地区排除年轻人在城市学校学习的各种因素的复杂组合。中学教育是全球发展战略的基础，被视为使青年掌握在全球化世界中获得体面生计所需的知识和技能的最低权利。自1970年代以来，中等教育的入学率增加了9倍，但城市地区的青年面临资源不足和教室过度拥挤、家庭环境不稳定、犯罪和性别社会压力、强迫就业、卫生条件差和健康挑战。有机会上学但被排除在学习机会之外的年轻人是iBali网络的核心。非洲公立学校很少关注年轻人表达他们对所居住的世界和他们想要的世界的观点和经验，这加剧了对学习的排斥。我们建议建立一个由专家和早期职业研究人员（ecr）和从业者组成的网络，他们的工作围绕使用参与式讲故事来解决社会问题，在GCRF挑战3（包容和公平的优质教育）、8（可持续城市和社区）和11（贫困、不平等和性别）的交叉点上工作。讲故事的方法整合了国际、学术和本土的叙述，有助于揭示不同形式的知识并赋予其价值。通过关注在校青年和讲故事，iBali网络致力于推广艺术方法来应对发展挑战，并通过艺术使发展知识民主化。AHP还强调了非洲艺术和人文系的资金不足，以及跨艺术/发展边界工作的学者在建立网络、合作和对话方面的机会有限。根据我们自己的经验，我们知道，为从事关键社会问题的ecr提供的研究方法培训，使跨越这一界限的学者数量达到临界水平。这绝对是艺术之外的问题，主要的方法方法在如何构建和调查学习排斥方面可能存在问题。巴厘岛网络直接回应了这些关切。通过一系列活动，包括在南非的一个方法共享暑期学校、在肯尼亚的一个筹资研讨会招标，以及对非洲各地的ecr的持续支持，iBali旨在动员学者使用参与式讲故事的方法。该网络将通过与学者、从业人员、教师和学习者本身合作，展示各种方法，挑战城市教育系统将青年排除在学习之外的方式。核心团队由来自尼日利亚、肯尼亚、英国、瑞典和南非的国际知名学者组成。咨询小组的地理范围扩大到加纳、乌干达、坦桑尼亚、赞比亚和塞拉利昂。此外，通过招募ecr， iBali网络及其推广的方法和由此产生的影响将是真正的泛非。为了更好地理解为什么年轻人不在城市学校学习，需要新的关注和更有创造性的工作。通过iBali对讲故事的关注，艺术成为知识生成的一种模式，也是一种表达和参与的形式。其目的是为一个可持续和可扩展的网络创造初始条件，通过这个网络，学者、活动家、政策制定者、教师和非洲青年自己可以发现、突出和解决排斥现象。

In a recent forum on reinvigorating arts and humanities in Africa, the African Humanities Programme (AHP) highlighted the important contribution they can make to defining African approaches to building scholarship and meeting social challenges. The social challenge the iBali Network is focussed on is the complex combination of factors which exclude young people from learning in urban schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary school education underpins global development strategies, and is seen as a minimum entitlement for equipping youth with the knowledge and skills required to secure decent livelihoods in a globalised world. Enrollment in secondary education has increased nine-fold since the 1970s, but youth in urban areas face under-resourced and overcrowded classrooms, unstable home-environments, crime and gendered social pressures, forced employment, poor sanitation and health challenges. It is young people who have opportunities for schooling, but who are excluded from opportunities for learning, who are at the centre of the iBali Network. Learning exclusions are compounded by the little attention given in African public schools to young people's articulation of their perspectives and experiences of the world they inhabit and the world they want.We propose to create a network of expert and early career researchers (ECRs) and practitioners whose work coalesces around using participatory storytelling to tackle social issues, working at the intersection of GCRF challenges 3 (inclusive and equitable quality education), 8 (sustainable cities and communities) and 11 (poverty, inequality and gender). Storytelling approaches integrate international, scholarly and indigenous narratives and help surface and give value to different forms of knowledge. Through a focus on in-school youth and storytelling, the iBali Network is committed to both the promotion of arts approaches to address development challenges and the democratisation of knowledge about development through the arts.The AHP also highlighted under-funding of arts and humanities departments in Africa, and the limited opportunities scholars working across the arts/development boundary have for networking, collaboration and dialogue. We know from our own experience that creating a critical mass of scholars working across this boundary is compounded by the research methods training available for ECRs working on critical social issues. This sits firmly outside the arts, and predominant methodological approaches can be problematic in how they frame and investigate exclusions from learning. The iBali Network responds directly to these concerns.Through a range of activities which include a methodology-sharing summer school in South Africa, a bidding for funding workshop in Kenya, and sustained support for ECRs from across Africa, iBali aims to mobilise academics using participatory storytelling approaches. The network will demonstrate the approaches by working with academics, practitioners, and teachers and learners themselves to challenge the ways in which youth are excluded from learning in urban education systems. The core team is made up of internationally renowned scholars from Nigeria, Kenya, the UK, Sweden and South Africa. The Advisory Group extends the geographical reach to Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Sierra Leone. Further, through the recruitment of ECRs, the iBali Network, the methodologies it promotes, and the resulting impact, will be authentically pan-African.Fresh attention and more creative work is required to better understand why youth don't learn in urban schools. Through iBali's focus on storytelling, the arts become a mode of knowledge generation as well as a form of expression and engagement. The intention is to create the starting conditions for a sustainable and scalable network through which exclusions can be surfaced, highlighted and addressed by scholars, activists, policy makers, teachers and the youth of Africa themselves.