Art-based reflections from 12 years of adolescent health and development-related research in South Africa (original) (raw)
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Irish Journal of Anthropology, 22(1), 262-278., 2019
This article draws from fieldwork in an urban neighbourhood in Maputo among teenagers who, every day, face a complex and precarious landscape of living with the virus of HIV in zones of marginality and social exclusion. I discuss whether creative methodological tools can be helpful to medical anthropology researchers, in order to better understand youth’s experiences of illness, body and subjectivity. Looking for ‘child-centred’ research methods I reflect on issues related to representation, translation, and power when enabling young people’s perspectives through drawings and photography.
Plos Global Public Health, 2023
Arts-based methods are underutilized in violence research and may offer improved means of understanding these phenomena; but little is known about their value, especially in lowresource settings. A pilot study using a cross sectional sample was conducted in rural South Africa to determine the feasibility and acceptability of using arts-based methods in research with adults and children, in preparation for a longitudinal multigenerational cohort study on mechanisms that underly the intergenerational transmission of violence. Four arts-based methods were piloted with young adults aged 22-30 years (n = 29), children aged 4-7 years (n = 21) and former caregivers of the young adults aged 40-69 years (n = 11). A sample of qualitative interviews were audio recorded and transcribed (child n = 15, adults n = 19). Three focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted to understand implementation and lessons learnt with the six interviewers on the study team, none of whom had used these methods in research before. Interviews and FGDs were audio recorded, transcribed and reviewed by the investigative team. Using a rapid analytical approach, our pilot study demonstrated that using arts and play-based methods in multigenerational violence research is feasible and acceptable to participants and interviewers. These methods worked well for nearly all participants regardless of age or ability and offered a comfortable and 'fun' way to engage in weighty conversations. They presented benefits in their capability to facilitate disclosure, expanding understanding, particularly around violence that is often a stigmatizing and sensitive experience. Interviewers required increased capacity and sensitivity in using the methods carefully, to maximize their full potential, and ongoing mentorship was indicated. Our study adds to the burgeoning evidence base of the effectiveness of the use of arts-based methods in health research.
Visualising voices of Youth: The role of a media advocacy project in a South African social movement
My first day of fieldwork was spent driving around Khayelitsha in a minibus taxi, as local pop songs blasted from the speakers. The six high school students in the van danced and sang along. Out the window, street scenes flashed by us, as we made our way to the offices of the social movement Equal Education located in Kwezi Park2. Founded in 2008, E.E advocates for improved education standards in South Africa. It is a social movement comprised of learners, parents, teachers and community members working for quality and equality in education. For five weeks I worked with these six black3 students, referred to as Equalisers, who are aged between 16-20. They are part of E.E’s media advocacy project called Amawzi Wethu (A.W) - our voices4. There were five girls Amanda, Sisanda, Lorna, Kedibone, Phelokazi and one boy Siphonathi nicknamed ‘Chief’. They came from different schools and met through their involvement in A.W. The program focused on teaching them how to make media content for E.E’s campaigns. The aim was for the content to serve as a tool for advocacy, amplifying the voice of the youth led social movement. Khayelitsha is an informal settlement, which means ‘new home’ in isiXhosa. Established by the Apartheid government in 1983, it is roughly 30km from the city of Cape Town. The 2011 Census figures reflected a population of 400 000, 40% of whom are under 20 years of age5. South Africa’s cities face massive challenges, largely due to Apartheid urban planning design. Informal settlements are growing, and infrastructure backlogs are widespread. The 1990s saw an influx of people from the Eastern Cape seeking employment opportunities, yet fifty percent of the population is unemployed6. Electricity ‘nyonga’7 wires crisscross the skyline. These ‘borrowed’ lines provide unstable power for many residents who live in small informal dwellings that locals call 2 Fig.3 3. In this thesis I use racial terminology familiar to South Africans: ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘coloured’ have ambiguous status, I am complicit in entrenching their racial meanings by using them, while remaining true to local speech. 4 Fig.2 5 National Treasury, Confronting Youth Unemployment: Policy Options for South Africa. available at http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/national%20budget/2011/Confronting %20youth%20unemployment%20- %20Policy%20options.pdf 6 Sinclair-Smith,K. & Turok,I. 2012 The changing spatial economy of cities: An exploratory analysis of Cape Town, Development Southern Africa, 29:3, 391-417 7 isiXhosa (snake) 5 shacks. Provision of services such as water, sanitation, and electricity feature strongly in local struggles for access to public services. However, Khayelitsha’s housing is not completely ‘informal’. There are mortar and brick homes with shiny new cars parked behind security gates. The area faces difficulties with infrastructure and crime, but is also filled with aspiring and vibrant communities, and is the place the students I worked with all call home. In this dissertation, I seek to understand how a youth media discourse is evidenced in specific localities. Critical enquiry into the way ‘empowerment’ and ‘agency’ manifest themselves is explored. There is a limitation embedded in a framework that installs empowerment as the end goal. It tends to position individuals as key agents of change in the face of broader structural inequalities. There is a relative short supply of scholarship about media advocacy projects, that focuses on the perspective of the youth involved8. In resource-poor communities young people face limited access to platforms of self- expression. Most of the largely under resourced high schools in Khayelitsha do not offer creative subjects and there are limited extramural opportunities available9. The process of telling stories creates a space to develop a perception of the self in relation to a wider audience. This can allow for cathartic expression, particularly in a difficult environment where levels of violence are incredibly high. Many young people feel that they are not listened to by their elders, nor are their opinions reflected in the mainstream media. George Marcus speaks of the “activist imaginary” to express how marginalized groups use media to make new claims of citizenship10. Social agents navigate the opportunities available, scrambling for platforms that allow for forms of inclusion to be realized. Youth media programs become important in engaging individual’s strengths, developing their self-confidence that creates a space to dream and exercise social mobility. The social movement utilizes particular activist strategies in order to harness collective mobilization. Individual voices and the films they make, stand in for the wider movement in order for them to be used as advocacy tools. 8 Hauge,C. 2014 Youth media and agency, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35:4, 471-484 9 Azania,M 2014. Memoirs of a Born Free. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 12-34 10 Marcus et al Ginsburg,F. 1996 ‘Introduction’ in Media Worlds Ginsburg, Faye D ; Abu-Lughod, Lila ; Larkin, Brian (eds) Berkeley : University of California Press 2002, 39-58 6 Within this dynamic I am interested in how a balance between the individual and the collective is carefully navigated. My basic research question follows: “What are the activist imaginaries of young social actors in an ‘informal settlement’ and what kind of expressive platforms do they access within the social space that they navigate?”
Education as Change, 2015
This article investigates and reflects on the methodologies employed, results achieved and questions raised in two recent transformative educational interventions. Both interventions fall under the broader Emerging Arts Activist Programme created by artist and educator Farieda Nazier. Chewing the Cud, the first workshop, was held at the Apartheid Museum in 2013 and facilitated by Nazier; the Angry Youth Workshop was subsequently held with students of the New Nation School in Fietas, 2014, led by Mocke J. van Veuren with mentoring by Nazier and Cedric Nunn. The authors compare the ways in which transformative processes and methods developed in their own critical arts practice have influenced the design and delivery of the youth-oriented arts interventions mentioned above. Processes of conscientisation, decolonisation, and the exercise of agency are explored through arts practices that address the interface between historicity, the everyday and personal experience as a field of critical discourse. Through the analysis of creative outputs and student feedback, and reflection on methodology, this article forms part of an on-going Downloaded by [41.151.163.169] at 03:36 19 September 2015 Nazier and Van Veuren Thinking/making project, which aims to develop and test youth-focused critical pedagogies specifically focused on dealing with the aftermath of apartheid.
Children's Geographies, 2012
Methods of participatory research have become popular among children's geographers as they are believed to enable young people to speak openly about their lives in unthreatening contexts. In this article, we reflect on our experience of using participatory methods to explore the sensitive topic of (indirect) impacts of AIDS on young people's livelihoods in Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how different methodological approaches generate varying knowledges of children's lived realities; challenges of using ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ research assistants; the place of group-based approaches in participatory research; and ethical issues. We suggest that researchers of young people's lives should take full account of the relationship between epistemology and methodology in selecting and employing methods appropriate to particular research questions.
African Studies Review
In Finding Voice: A Visual Arts Approach to Engaging Social Change, Kim Shelley Berman examines how the arts can be used through intra/inter-personal, organizational, collaborative, and communal relationships to address social injustice. Berman considers the pros and cons of different approaches to research, arguing "that there is no fixed methodology of best practice, for engaging social change through the arts." The creative process can enliven many theories of change and encourage the evolution of processes hitherto non-existent (9). Berman relies on John Paul Lederach's approach, adopting arts-based methods of inquiry for social action and justice. This book approaches its subject from several angles, including the challenges of building an arts organization, the impact of government policies, arts as a tool for social change, the resilience of individual(s) and their communities, and the need for collaboration. Among the narratives presented in the book is the story of Artist Proof Studio (APS), a tale reminiscent of South Africa's Long Walk to Freedom. One of APS's most pressing challenges was to overcome the aftermath of apartheid. At APS, printmaking became a democratic medium to engage social change; black and white artists worked harmoniously on collaborative projects that transcended race and class. The saddening fire incident at APS resulted in the death of its co-founder, Nhlanhla Xaba, and the destruction of valuable artworks. Rebuilding APS connects the shattered pieces of the South African soul with the socio-political history of apartheid and the need to build a transformed society. It is, however, disheartening to note that one of the teachers at APS failed to learn from what he taught others about HIV/AIDS; he refused counseling and treatment, which resulted in his death. Failure to learn from history could constitute a sticking point for the wheel of development; moreover, some political leaders such as Jacob Zuma (63) have not shown enough responsible leadership, as evident by their lifestyles.
ImaginingOtherwise: A Glossary of Arts Education Practice on the Cape Flats
ArtsPraxis Volume 7 Issue 2b, 2020
ImaginingOtherwise is a cross disciplinary collaboration grounded in artistic practice, activism and youth-led social change. Located in Cape Town, South Africa, this is a year-long project of engagement with the arts for young people from the Cape Flats and young people from migrant backgrounds in other areas in Cape Town. The project asks how young people make sense of race and spatial inequalities in Cape Town. We aim to reflect on the role of creativity in the context of violence and economic and developmental dispossession, asking: How does theatre for social change produce educational and activist alternatives? We consider how dialogic creative arts generate a theory and practice of social change by, with and for peripheralized young people in Cape Town.
in: Thaddeus Müller (ed.) Contributions from European Symbolic Interactionists: Reflections on Methods (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 44)
Although ethnographic research requires researchers to become highly involved in the lives of their respondents, in research reports or articles one rarely finds how the researcher dealt with his or her involvement, how this influenced the execution of the research, the interpretations and the outcome. In this chapter, I discuss the issues that I faced during my research among children and young people living in so-called child-headed households in a disadvantaged community in South Africa. A major unanticipated effect of the research was the emotional effect on myself. Doing research to children and young people in such difficult situations requires emotion work. In the conclusions I will make some suggestions for dealing with the emotions of respondents and one own emotional involvement. Overall, existing ethical guidelines only seem to provide a guide that helps researchers to consider potential ethical issues. Because all circumstances differ, a set of ethical values should be developed with room for flexibility. As ethical dilemmas may arise at any stage of the research and are also not always anticipated, the researcher needs to be continuing reflecting and adapting these guidelines.