Abstract
Strong Houses, Strong Voices is a practice-led research project that 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. The research was conducted in partnership with South African socio-ecological initiative Qala Phelang Tala (QPT). QPT has developed a hands-on, regenerative approach to improving informal settlement housing that they call “post-natural”—building practices that use common materials such as tyres, bottles, mud, straw, manure, and water to create shack-replacement houses. Strong Houses, Strong Voices centres the stories and needs of the participating builders within the reflexive framework of community cultural development (CCD) practice. In this research, CCD is defined as a process in which arts and cultural practices are utilised by a community—with or without external intervention—to raise individual and collective capacities, empower community members to take collective action on issues that are important to them, and positively affect communities’ positions within the context of larger social institutions. Therefore, the research aims are focused on both delivering benefits to the participants, as well as creating new knowledge within the CCD field of practice. The research’s significance lies, in part, in the proposal and articulation of a transferrable model for community-based creative collaboration that can be used to support empowering CCD practice in other contexts. This paper describes and documents the process for arriving at the model and draws out key themes and questions, through an examination of the use of CCD practice in the research.
Presenters
Christine ScogginProject Manager Sector Capacity Building, The Chamber of Arts and Culture WA, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus - Voices from the Edge: Negotiating the Local in the Global
KEYWORDS
Co-creation, Empowerment, Self-representation, Social Change, Community Cultural Development, South Africa
