Reimagining Education Through the Arts: Insights from Refugee Schools in Uganda

• In Event: Reimagining Inclusive Education in Refugee Contexts: Pathways, Praxis, and Participation

Proposal

Creativity in Crisis: Why the Arts Matter in Displacement

Engagement in the Arts fosters creativity, psychosocial well-being, and a sense of identity–offering children powerful tools for self-expression, emotional regulation and social connection. These benefits are especially critical in conflict-affected and displacement settings, where trauma and instability disrupt healthy childhood development. Despite their recognized psychosocial benefits, arts-based approaches to primary education are rarely utilized in contexts of forced displacement because they are not an examinable subject. In Uganda, while the creative arts are included in the national curriculum, they are rarely taught due to too few art teachers, inadequate lesson plans, limited teacher professional development, prioritization of examinable subjects, and a general lack of time and resources.

Ubumwe: Arts as Education, Healing, and Peace-building

The Ubumwe: Integrating Arts for Education and Psychosocial Support with Children and Youth Affected by Displacement in Uganda project seeks to address this gap by providing a comprehensive model for integrating arts education into Ugandan national schools, with a primary focus on those that serve refugee students. Students affected by displacement may significantly benefit from the mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) that the Arts inherently offer. Ubumwe presents a unique opportunity to strengthen support for refugee children through the Arts that can be leveraged for all children in Uganda, refugees and non-refugees alike. The project advances the Arts as a critical intersection of education and peace—positioning arts education as a pathway to foster social cohesion in increasingly polarized contexts. This fits in seamlessly with this year’s CIES conference theme centered around re-examining education in a divided world.
Funded by Columbia World Projects (CWP), Ubumwe is carried out by U.S. and Ugandan partners, including Columbia University, the AfriChild Centre (Makerere University), HAF Uganda, Arts Ignite, and Artolution. Since 2022, we have developed and refined an arts-based curriculum for primary school classrooms, with input from artists familiar with Ugandan refugee-serving schools. The curriculum supports both academic engagement and psychosocial well-being among refugee and host-community learners in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Western Uganda.
Kyangwali is home to over 149,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, and South Sudan. As Uganda remains one of the world’s top refugee-hosting countries, Kyangwali reflects broader challenges: strained education systems, limited resources, and high student-to-teacher ratios. Ongoing instability in neighboring countries continues to bring new arrivals, adding pressure to settlement housing and education infrastructure.
At present, the Ubumwe Project collaborates with three schools in Kyangwali–two within the refugee settlement and one in a neighboring community–reaching 88 teachers and 4,300 learners in grades 3-6. Teachers began engaging with the project in January 2025 through a professional development workshop. Since then, curriculum implementation has been accompanied by research, monitoring and evaluation activities.

Designing for Transformation: Curriculum and Research Questions

Ubumwe takes a two-pronged approach to research, monitoring, and evaluation, focusing on both teacher and student outcomes. Our paper examines the experiences and outcomes of learners and teachers engaged in this arts-based curriculum. Building on data from an earlier pilot study, we explore how the Arts support student learning and emotional well-being while also enhancing teacher identity, classroom engagement, and professional confidence.
Our study is guided by the following overarching research questions: How does engagement with an Arts curriculum influence the experiences, well-being, and development of learners and teachers in Kyangwali refugee settlement? Specifically, we ask: How does learning the Arts shape learners’ academic engagement, well-being, and overall schooling experiences? And, how does teaching the Arts shape teachers’ professional identity, well-being, and pedagogical practices? We use a mixed-methods approach to explore and examine these questions.

Methodologies for Meaning-Making

This mixed-methods study is grounded in a hybrid theoretical framework that integrates arts education, culturally relevant and critical pedagogy, and decolonial theory. It explores how participation in teacher and learning art modalities can nurture engagement, well-being, and transformation among learners and teachers in refugee and host-community settings.
To examine these constructs, this study draws on data collected from primary school students and teachers in grades 3-6 across three schools in the refugee and host community in Kyangwali. We analyzed qualitative data from classroom observations conducted at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year and in-depth teacher interviews and student focus group discussions facilitated at the beginning and end of the school year. Quantitative data from teacher surveys (n=48) helped interpret the impact of teaching the Arts and engaging in continuous arts-based professional development on teacher well-being. We conducted thematic analysis of these data sets to examine how learners and teachers experienced and perceived the effects of engaging with the Arts curriculum.

Reimagining Education Through the Arts

Initial findings show how Arts engagement supports learning, well-being, and teacher development in refugee settings. By focusing on Kyangwali refugee settlement, our study addresses challenges faced by children and educators coping with the impacts of displacement. More broadly, the study contributes to broader efforts to conduct collaborative and participatory studies, including the addition of arts-based methodologies. Findings from the study will inform refugee education programming in Uganda and similar contexts, offering evidence of how an Arts curriculum can improve both academic and psychosocial outcomes for students and teachers. Ultimately, this work seeks to reimagine education in displacement through the transformative potential of the Arts.

Authors

• Ashleigh Marie Sable, Ashleigh Sable

• Melissa Rooney, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Mary Mendenhall, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Kemigisha Richardson, Teachers College at Columbia University

• Moisa Saidu, Columbia University Teachers Colleg