Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses co-creative research processes to investigate community-led innovations to support sustainable social change and challenge power and agency in development. We present case studies of using creative approaches to address sorcery and gender related violence in Papua New Guinea.

Paper long abstract:

The field of international development is characterised by uneven power dynamics between those who fund programs and those who are regarded as beneficiaries of such initiatives. A gap often exists between western frameworks and developing locally appropriate solutions to development. To address this gap and make visible everyone's varied contributions, arts-based approaches can create spaces that acknowledge people's creative and innovative engagements embedded in local contexts. Here, creative processes embedded in the arts based forms are critical in ensuring that these spaces provide equal opportunities to participants while exploring different perceptions, understandings and tensions. In these spaces arts based practitioners can contribute to mediate tenuous spaces using the tools and processes that artistic practices offer.

In this paper, we draw on our collective experience using storytelling, drama and film for research, advocacy and monitoring and evaluation. We present case studies of undertaking action research using creative approaches to develop communication strategies to address sorcery and gender related violence in Papua New Guinea. In partnership with local human rights organisations we used participatory creative methods including digital storytelling and process drama forms to yield nuanced understandings of local conceptualisations and knowledges, and to uncover innovative community-led approaches addressing the issue of violence. Incorporating an indigenous research framework, the project emphasises joint ownership of narratives and visual outputs which in turn are shared with communities and stakeholders nationally. This paper then makes a key contribution to understanding collaborative and co-creative research processes to investigate community-led innovations that can support sustainable social change and challenge power and agency in development.