Culture & development: Consultation, training & policy development with NGOs and artists in Kisumu County, Kenya

Professor Jane Plastow - School of English, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures

Development Studies - Responsive Mode

Culture and development: Consultation, training and policy development with NGOs and artists in Kisumu County, Kenya is an eight month project that will develop training methodologies and a range of supporting documents on effective partnership working between NGOs and artists in western Kenya in support of development programmes.

Previous research conducted by Plastow (2018-2021), found that many national and international NGOs are using local artists to support messaging in relation to development objectives, but that staff in these agencies have little or no training in how to employ creative tools for research, information sharing/messaging/behaviour change, or in relation to evaluation and that this means potential impact is greatly lessened. In collaboration with four NGOs, we will establish a collaborative working model to improve understandings of how arts-based tools can best work in support of development agendas. We will conduct 1) a range of consultation workshops to identify how the arts are utilised by NGOs and problems with achieving impact 2) training workshops for NGO workers on arts-based approaches and management of collaborations with artists 3) a sector wide dissemination event for artists, NGOs and local policymakers that will include presentation of the developed NGO training model and supporting documentation developed from the project.

We see this as a pilot project, seeking to understand the training needs for a wide range of (I)NGOs in relation to utilising arts-based methodologies.

Professor Jane Plastow can be contacted on j.e.plastow@leeds.ac.uk