Community-driven peacebuilding through education: Insights from a critical-digital arts-informed project 

• In Event: Experiences in education during COVID across the lifespan of learning

Proposal

Covid-19 was a reminder of the dual-reality of the current globalized world. Many societies in Global North experienced the increasing connectivity and collaboration with one another due to globalization and the advancement of digital technology. On the other hand, we also have witnessed the isolations of many marginalized communities, including post-conflict and transitional societies.

Since the 1990s, with the surge of international peace building organisations, many of the peace building activities and locally driven participatory grassroots projects turned into a top-down, one-size-fits-all superficial intervention (Upadhyaya and Kolås, 2018). Such a top-down approach sidelines local knowledge systems, experiences, and expertise, and neglect the plurality and diversity of contexts peace building actors work in. Insensitivity to local contexts and cultures has made peace building ineffective and led to the loss of trust in and legitimacy of international actors. Attempts to transform peace building were made with the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2282 in 2016. Among other changes, Resolution 2282 affirmed the need for local and national ownership and leadership as well as for strategic and operational partnerships across all sectors of society.

There are, however, other issues that prevent stakeholders from ensuring proper and full implementation of Resolution 2282 and designing and implementing more effective peace building programmes. One such issue is the lack of understanding by key stakeholders in multilateral/international organisations of how peace, and peace building processes can be conceptualised and done differently to meet the diverse needs of affected communities more effectively. Another issue is how to effectively engage local actors, even the most marginalised and vulnerable, in peace building processes to ensure their active, meaningful, and lasting participation and commitment. Therefore, it is important to explore the diverse views and conceptualisations stemming from the lived and professional experiences of local actors.

In this proposed presentation, we will share initial findings from our project, Local, place-based and community-driven approaches to peace building. Our project has thus focused on exploring how local actors in conflict and post-conflict contexts view, conceptualise, and approach peace and peace building to support conflict transformation and building of lasting peace in their communities. Further, we focused on exploring the ways in which these actors imagine the role of education for guiding peace building processes for their communities.

Covid-19 changed the ways in which researchers in the field of social sciences, including education, conduct research. Because of mobility restrictions due to Covid-19, we had to utilize digital methods entirely from the conceptualisation of the work to the data collection. We will share our own methodological framework stemming from our project, Critical-Translocal Digital-Relational Arts-Informed Research Framework. As the name suggests, the framework has three dimensions, Crit-Trans, Digital-Relational and Arts-Informed:


The Critical-Translocal dimension aims to guide researchers to critically analyse multi-faceted processes of glocaulity and power-dynamics at play between diverse global-local actors in transdisciplinary manner. As such, it is important for analysis to emphasize on local history, approach, experience, and understanding of a place in relation to a global phenomenon.

For our project, we explored the glocuality aspect of conceptualization of peace and peace building. We compared the concept of peace and peace building conceptualized in resolutions (e.g., the UN’s resolution 2282) and frameworks published by multilateral and international organisations to local actors’ understanding of peace and peace building , stemming from their community-driven epistemologies. As such, our project aimed to provide a platform for authentic trans-local encounters wherein sharing and learning between local actors could happen. Authentic here refers to emotional engagement and commitment to the ethics and responsibility (Kim, 2021).

The Digital-Relational dimension emphasizes the role of digital methods and spaces in building and sustaining relationships with participants. The ‘digital’ aspect includes the usage of an array of technologies (computer-based or electronic), platforms and communication and media channels for collecting and analysing data in research (Dawson, 2020). The aim of ‘Digital-relational’ is to use these diverse ‘digital’ technologies and platform with a goal of building and furthering relationships, thus fostering trans-local encounters.

In providing ‘authentic trans-local encounters’ whereby participants continue to build and sustain relationships with each other as well as with researchers, this framework centres stories and storytelling as a methodology. The framework is guided by pragmatism, and suggests for the eclectic usage of digital methods and tools that meets the particular style and needs of researchers to collect and create narratives of participants’ experiences. In this way, this framework is arts-informed rather than arts-based. Arts-informed research is a mode and form of qualitative research in the social sciences that is influenced by, but not based in, the arts broadly conceived. The main purpose of arts-informed research is to enhance one’s understanding and experience by bridging conventional qualitative methodologies with some art forms to reach a wider audience (Cole & Knowledge, 2007). In this regard, we employed various arts forms and methods including stories and visual storytelling (e.g., animations) as well as more conventional qualitative methods (e.g., survey) in this project. We situate our project as a narrative inquiry guided by the Crit-Trans Digital-Relational arts-informed research framework. Narrative researchers describe peoples’ lives, collect and tell stories of them and write narratives of experiences (Connelly & Cladinin, 1990).

While data collection is still in progress until 31 December 2021, we have gathered the views of participants from various contexts using an online survey, four storytelling webinars, two arts-based webinars, and are planning online focus group discussions. The participants came from countries as diverse as Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Canada, DRC, Cameroon, and many others. Our webinars were facilitated by an Indigenous storytelling professional (Bundjalung-Yugumbeh-Darumbal-Wiradjuri, Australia) and a graphic artist (UK).
Contribution: The findings from this project seek to re-imagine how peace building through education is done, and contribute to improving the field by offering unique insights collected using creative methods. Our presentation contributes to the dialogue amongst CIES community members to reflect on diverse views on peacebuilding stemming from the voices of actors from the field across the globe, thus as suggested by the theme of CIES 2022 conference, ‘illuminating the power of idea/lism’.

Authors

• Yulia Nesterova, University of Glasgow

• Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Griffith University