Research project
Pas en Avant: Community Integration through Dance-Based Pedagogy in the Lake Chad Region
- Start date: 1 January 2019
- End date: 1 August 2020
- Funder: GCRF/AHRC
- Primary investigator: 01000498
- Co-investigators: Taigue Ahmed
Value
£60,000
Partners and collaborators
Association Ndam Se Na (Chad/ Germany), UNIHCR (Chad) Open University (UK)
Description
This project will support the training of five social artists in the Pas en Avant Method, developed by Chadian artist and social worker Taigue Ahmed.
The pedagogy, developed over the last 10 years in refugee camps across Sub-Saharan Africa, uses dance as method for community development and sensitisation among refugee and host communities. The project will enable social artists from various Sub-Saharan countries to work in N'Djamena with practitioner Taigue Ahmed, and to conduct fieldwork in the refugee camp of Dar es Salaam in Baga Sola (Chad). This area is affected by the disappearance of the Lake Chad (once the largest freshwater lake in Africa), and by ongoing political, social and military conflicts.
The five chosen trainees are Baidy Ba (Senegal) Julie Iarisoa (Madagascar), Olivier Gansaore (Burkina Faso), Bienvenu Ndoubabe (Centra African Republic) and Bibata Ibrahim Maiga (Mali). The fund will also help us curate a second version of the festival of refugee arts Dance for a Life 2019. Following the success of Dance for a Life 2018, a festival curated by Taigue Ahmed with support from a previous AHRC network fund, we will organising a follow-up event in September 2019. Our plan is to invite artists, NGOs stakeholders, and government actors, to showcase social development through the performing arts across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in relation to current migration crises.
Impact
This project is conducted in partnership with UNHCR Chad, and it is intended to have social impact in the refufee camp of Dar Es Salaam in Baga Sola.
We will be writing an impact report to UNHCR about the value of arts pedagogy in refugee camps, to be implemented in other refugee camps run by United Nations (UNHCR). In addition, the impact agenda of this project is designed in terms of the cultural and artistic value of the work created by the community in Baga Sola, and by the trainee artists both during the training programme (April 2019-June 2019) and also during the implementation phase in their own countries.
The event Dance For a Life 2019 will showcase social artistic practice conducted in various countries across Sub-Saharan Africa.