Shaping policy processes through citizen voice in Francophone West Africa: the arts as a vehicle for knowledge co-construction

这一网络活动召集了来自西非萨赫勒法语区的研究、政策、文化和社区参与组织。在这种情况下，许多公民很少有机会为治理进程作出贡献，他们的声音在审议空间很少被听到。与此同时，音乐和绘画等创造性和艺术方法也被用于其他地方，以代表公民对政策的声音，其方式可以被概念化为讲故事，如照片声音，数字讲故事或参与式电影制作。这种产出的共同创造往往发生在参与者和研究人员之间。由于西非有着丰富的讲故事传统，该网络旨在发现艺术和文化方法是否可以在这里类似地使用，并进一步探索政策制定者本身是否可以与社区和艺术家一起共同创造对共同关心的问题的理解。来自五个研究机构的跨学科研究人员的核心小组将绘制政策和民间社会利益相关者以及艺术专业人士的地图。一个子集将接受采访，以了解在何种条件下，艺术共同创作可能。将邀请另一部分受访者召集更广泛的网络并参加一个研讨会，讨论对这些问题的答案以及总体研究目标。讲习班的一部分将涉及一项活动，在这项活动和讲习班范围内，决策者和社区及宣传代表试图通过一项预先确定但灵活的创造性活动，在艺术家的协助下，共同创造对一个关切问题的理解，这些艺术家被称为“讲故事者”。对问题的答复和辩论的结果将由发展司处理成一份工作文件和一份政策简报。艺术家们将努力从创造性活动中创造出一套可传达的输出。这些将通过传统和现代媒体进行宣传，从广播到Instagram。因此，将提高其他相关组织对议程的认识，使其能够参与进一步研究，或采用在实际领域试用的技术，提高网络成员的能力，但通过传播活动，更广泛的公众和政策、宣传和研究界将认识到网络和开展此类工作的潜力。

This networking activity convenes research, policy, cultural and community engagement organisations from across Sahelian Francophone West Africa. In this context, many citizens have minimal opportunity to contribute to governance processes, and their voices are seldom heard in deliberative spaces. Meanwhile, creative and artistic methods such as music and drawing have been used elsewhere to represent citizen voice to policy, in ways which could be conceptualised as storytelling, such as photovoice, digital storytelling or participatory filmmaking. Co-creation of such outputs often occurs between participants and researchers. As a rich tradition of storytelling exists in West Africa, this network aims to discover whether artistic and cultural methods can be used similarly here and, going further, whether policy makers themselves can engage with communities and artists to co-create understanding about issues of mutual concern.The core group of interdisciplinary researchers from five research institutions will map policy and civil society stakeholders, as well as arts professionals. A subset will be interviewed to understand the conditions under which artistic co-creation could be possible. A further subset of interviewees will be invited to convene the wider network and participate in a workshop, where the answers to these questions, and to the overall research objective, will be debated. Part of the workshop will involve an activity where policy makers and community and advocacy representatives attempt to co-create understanding about an issue of concern through a pre-determined but flexible creative activity, facilitated by artists, termed 'storytellers' in the context of this activity and workshop. The answers to questions and the results of the debate will be processed by IDS into a working paper and a policy brief. The artists will work to create a communicable set of outputs from the creative activity. These will be publicised through traditional and modern media, from radio to Instagram. Thereby, awareness of the agenda will be raised among other relevant organisation, who may be able to participate in researching them further, or adapting the techniques trialled in the practical domain.Capacity of the network members will be raised, but through the dissemination activities, the wider public and policy, advocacy and research communities will become aware of the network and the potentials for developing this kind of work.