CUSP N+ Partners & Work Packages
All CUSP research will be guided by three research questions which will help CUSP reach its objectives
To what extent can conflict transformation strategies be translated into artistic and cultural practices/products and merged with traditional knowledges and protocols in order to allow exploration of gender violence and coercion and identification of sustainable and locally-grounded routes to positive change?
How can conflict transformation practices be employed as decolonising strategies for collaborative working to overcome issues of power imbalance and tensions caused by them, on an ongoing basis?
How do/can LMIC artistic and cultural organisations become influencers and Reference?
Ghana Work Packages
Partners: University of Ghana; Noyam African Dance Institute
Work Package
Mapping migrant–host community gender conflict in Ghana; explore the underlying causes; examine the effects of these conflicts on livelihoods and socio-economic development; analyse the management strategies put in place to address these conflicts. This will lead to further understanding of the conflict transformation and the measures that can be adopted to alleviate conflict.
The work package will culminate in a performance based on research findings. Performed to a range of audiences this will allow dissemination of conflict transformation strategies to a wider, inter-generational audience.
Mexico Work Packages
Partners: IBBY, UNAM/CRIM, University of Glasgow
Work Package
Volunteer mediators who have experience of working in a variety of contexts where conflict has impacted on the lived realities of families and communities. With particular focus on how this conflict has impacted women and girls. Work package activities will centre on the depiction of conflict and gender in picture books and on collective analysis of how these topics are represented in children’s/young people’s books.
Community projects will document, archive and share examples of stories of transformation through their existing website and Network ‘Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts’ as well as through CUSP’s channels of dissemination.
Morocco Work Packages
Partners: Keele University, Racines
Work Package
Female artists are disadvantaged at multiple levels, because of their gender and their career choice. Where gender inequality is pervasive, civil unrest and conflict are more likely. This research will deploy a gendered approach to conflict transformation by: a) addressing the roles and opportunities that arts, culture and intangible heritage (e.g. performances, rituals, music)
play in conflict transformation; b) positing women as important actors for social change, education and transmission. Activities will start with a collection of testimonies among women artists in 3 regions in Morocco, merging theatre of the oppressed, conflict transformation strategies and local practices.
Palestine Work Packages
Partners: Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), NAWA for Culture and Arts Association
Work Package
The participants will be mainly females (70-80%) and will be selected from all Palestinian universities in Gaza. Development of online culturally based creative art workshops that reflect conflict transformation from a Palestinian protracted crisis context. This work package will deliver two training workshops (30-hour each). The workshops will be delivered to two groups of 50 Palestinian final year students and recent graduates of English Language Departments.
The groups will include hearing-impaired and also young women with other disabilities. The training will develop participants’ creative writing techniques/ skills related to conflict transformation to tackle gender violence and/or coercion. Online performances will ensure a wide audience beyond the confines of the Gaza Strip, to include other parts of Palestine and beyond.
Zimbabwe Work Packages
Partners: CHIPAWO LitFest Harare
Work Package
Conflict transformation will be contextualised at the intersection of race, ethnicity and gender. The work package will explore the ways in which language is weaponised to create conflict, testing ways for young people to contribute to bringing about sustainable and inclusive peace among Zimbabweans.
LitFest will carry out activities with young artists through story-telling and spoken word / poetry on the topic of gender violence and coercion to identify strategies for conflict transformation,
including revisiting Zimbabwean oral traditions to identify activities that bring young people, particularly young women, out of their linguistic and social enclaves. The youth section of Chipawo (New Horizon Youth Theatre) will develop scenarios of conflict transformation and gender and devise participatory theatre pieces. These pieces will be performed to a range of audiences, including local schools and communities.