Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Strong Houses, Strong Voices is an arts-based research project which uses co-created first-person video narratives to present the lived experiences of a group of “post-natural” builders currently constructing houses within South African informal settlements. Post-natural builders use a combination of traditional building materials such as mud, straw, manure and water, and repurposed materials such as tires, cans and bottles to create low-cost, environmentally appropriate “shack replacement” houses. The builders are typically geographically dispersed, time poor, and extremely marginalized due to lack of formal education, lack of citizenship, or disability. The study ultimately aims to encourage widespread take up of these citizen-led building practices, whilst challenging national housing standards that typically prohibit such experimental structures. The study is based on the ‘digital storytelling’ methodology pioneered by the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), which is widely regarded as a democratizing and empowering methodology for community arts and arts-based research. Such approaches have been used extensively in South Africa for research and community arts purposes, most notably in relation to teacher training, and examination of gender-based violence and HIV-related stigma. The study responds to criticisms of this methodology that include its formulaic models, extensive time requirements and leanings toward sentimentality, by demonstrating how it can be successfully adapted to telling the powerful stories of these South African “post-natural” builders.