Children, Youth, and Participatory Arts for Peacebuilding: Lessons from Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Nepal

This book demonstrates how participatory arts-based approaches can help children and youth contribute to peacebuilding within post-conflict contexts and to their communities.

Cultural forms of storytelling through visual arts, drama, music, and dance can help to enhance post-conflict community well-being, social cohesion, and conflict prevention. However, in the planning and implementation of these arts-based projects, children and youth are often marginalised in decision-making processes. Drawing on cases from Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Nepal, this book demonstrates the benefits of participatory action research with children and youth to inform education curricula and policies for sustaining peace. Showing how artforms can be adapted to meet the needs of children and youth, the book emphasises the need to scale up arts-based peacebuilding initiatives and leverage for greater policy enactment from the bottom up. It is also an excellent example of South-South learning, advocating for a local approach to engage with arts-based methodologies and peacebuilding. This book will be of interest to researchers across the applied arts, sociology, anthropology, political science, peacebuilding, and international development.

Practitioners and policymakers would also benefit from the book’s recommendations for the implementation of successful arts-based research projects and interventions.

Ananda Breed is Professor of Theatre and Director of Research in the School of Creative Arts and Principal Investigator of AHRC GCRF project Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP): Informing the National Curriculum and Youth Policy for Peacebuilding in Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Indonesia and Nepal and UKRI GCRF Newton Fund project MAP at Home: Online Psychosocial Support Through the Arts in Rwanda. She has authored several books and articles on transitional justice, civic engagement, applied performance, and peace and conflict studies. Ananda served as a consultant for UNICEF, IREX, ICRW, Contact Theatre, and the British Museum among other NGOs, IOs, and cultural organisations.

Helena-Ulrike Marambio worked with MAP as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) from 2020 to 2022 after passing her viva at the Human Rights Centre/Essex Law School (University of Essex, UK). Her socio-legal research focuses on disadvantaged groups in conflict-affected countries, particularly disabled women, children, and young people. She is currently Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Legal Gender Studies, Johannes Kepler Universität (JKU), Austria.

Kirrily Pells is Associate Professor of Childhood at the Social Research Institute, University College London (UCL), UK. Her research focuses on memories in childhood and intergenerational relations in Rwanda; the use of arts-based approaches with children and youth in Indonesia, Nepal, Rwanda, and Kyrgyzstan; and the interactions between structural, symbolic, and interpersonal violence in the lives of children and youth. She is a co-investigator on the MAP study.

Rajib Timalsina is Assistant Professor of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies at Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He teaches social research methodologies, peace research, and peace education. Rajib is also the country leader for a citizen-led assessment called Annual Status of Education Report in Nepal (ASER Nepal) and a member of the People’s Action for Learning Network (PAL Network). He is the Co-Secretary General of the Asia-Pacific Peace Research Association (APPRA).