Paper short abstract:

Partnerships in international development continue to be corrupted by hierarchies of knowledge. We will reflect on an academic, developmental and artistic collaboration between South Omo and London that has attempted to challenge those hierarchies over the last five years.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the widespread rhetoric of decolonising research and development travelling across academia globally, hierarchies of knowledge have sedimented into hard structures, influencing encounters across various constellations. The critiques by Chambers, Hobart, Ferguson, Crewe and Harrison and others that portrayed development as a neocolonial project many decades ago still ring true as far as knowledge extraction is concerned. Whether it is international development, artistic projects or academic research, sophisticated expertise and skill are seen as emanating out of the Global North while simpler knowledge is apparently extracted from decentralised locations. The political economy of funding creates opportunities for consultancy, creative collaboration or research that are skewed towards Europe, the US and Australasia, excluding consultants, scholars and artists in Africa, Asia and Latin America from central decision-making roles. This paper is about an experience of trying to challenge these mechanisms and assumptions in a space where development, scholarship, and creative collaborations intermingled. Since 2017 SOAS, Mekelle University and the South Omo Theatre Company have been part of an initiative that aspired towards decolonising knowledge production. We have given grants, made plays and films, and enabled research capacity development, the results of which substantiate our empirical claim that complex talent and expertise are even distributed across the world, even if funding opportunities are usually not. Collaboration across boundaries generates new inequalities and throws up new conflict and challenges; we will reflect on the processes required to confront rather than evade them with examples from Ethiopia and the UK.

Paper short abstract:

Using examples from the development of Tiranya Ko Koisani, this paper explains the potential of community theatre to actively dismantle prevailing trends in development interventions within Ethiopia and globally, transcending the Global North and Global South dichotomy.

Paper long abstract:

In 2018, Tesfahun Haddis, a theatre studies lecturer at Mekelle University, entered into a creative collaboration with Olisarali Olibui, a pastoralist and filmmaker who belongs to the Mursi tribe in Southern Ethiopia. The Mursi community's prolonged struggle with the Ethiopian government, characterized by a tumultuous relationship, prompted Olisarali and Tesfahun to devise a unique approach for cultural representation. Tesfahun supported Olisarali to script a political community play – Tiranya Ko Koisani (Playing the Mediator) Their intention was to utilize participatory theatre as an intervention for political engagement, countering the prevailing government centeralized imposition without community involvement.

In Ethiopia, the historical concentration of theatrical productions in the capital, Addis Ababa, marginalized access for the wider population. However, a transformative moment unfolded as the Mursi community crafted a groundbreaking play, challenging the conventional top-down approach prevalent in Ethiopian development and theatre production. Unlike government-sponsored plays serving as propaganda tools, the Mursi play represented a shift from central-to-peripheral influence to a bottom-up dynamic. This departure signalled a break in established barriers, actively challenging development intervention patterns in Ethiopia. The Mursi play stands as an exemplary instance of community theatre, specifically the theatre of the oppressed, actively dismantling prevailing trends in development interventions within Ethiopia and globally, transcending the Global North and Global South dichotomy

Paper short abstract:

The objective of the paper is to analyze policy priorities of Mursi communities, through the project “Mursi encountering the Other” (MEO). It explores whether thematic emphasis, framing and justification are different from that of regional, national and international actors.

Paper long abstract:

The project “Mursi encountering the Other: Mediating Representation, Research, and Influence,” (MEO) bridges communication between the Mursi, a minority agro pastoralist group in southern Ethiopia, with national and international policy makers. Policy making at various levels is usually a complex, yet surprisingly monotonous practices that embeds processes that are generally be exclusionary to minorities; sometimes creating platforms where the groups are the agenda but they themselves are not present at the table (Schröter, 2013). The project introduces a unique setting where research agenda, methodology and approaches of communicating results are all Mursi led.

The objective of the paper is to analyze proposed research issues developed by the Mursi. An all Mursi panel (representative of different territorial sections) selects the research proposals for funding based on feasibility and contribution towards the objectives of the MEO project in the area of “education or training for children and youth, enterprise development for Mursi women, improving encounters with tourists, and promoting peace with neighboring communities.” This paper analyses proposed research themes, whether selected for funding by the selection panel or not. The research issues documented in this paper are collected during project team meetings with the community, during panel simulations during trainings, and more importantly during panel proposal hearings. It explores whether thematic emphasis, framing and justification are different from that of regional, national and international actors.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the partnerships and forms of creative collaboration that contributed to the performance of Tiranya ko Koisani – a play performed at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa that was written and acted by Mursi people who, six months previously, had no prior knowledge of theatre.

Paper long abstract:

Tiranya ko Koisani – a play performed at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa in June 2022 – is a story of love and war in the far south of Ethiopia. The play was the first to be written and acted by Mursi people who, six months previously, had no prior knowledge of theatre. This paper will follow the journey to the National Theatre of the South Omo Theatre Company – a partnership including Mursi agro-pastoralists turned playwrights and actors, Ethiopian theatre directors, British anthropologists and a filmmaker. Starting with the search for funding, it highlights missteps, backward steps, obstacles along the way, and routes not taken. The paper goes on to consider possibilities for creative collaboration in development and participatory knowledge sharing. What stories are told, who gets to tell them, which stories and storytellers are left out, and at what point do we identify a happy ending? Particular attention is paid to the different forms of brokerage, translation and exchange required to communicate the needs of marginalized populations to policy makers in centres of power.

The paper will be accompanied by short clips showing the making of the play.