Arts as a vehicle for community building and post‐disaster development |
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| Authors: | Ephrat Huss Roni Kaufman Amos Avgar Eitan Shuker |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel;2. Advisor at Tag International Development, London, United Kingdom;3. Lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel |
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| Abstract: | Use of the arts in international aid is common in an ad hoc form, but it has not been systematically theorised or evaluated. The arts have the potential to be a culturally contextualised and sustainable intervention for adults and children in the aftermath of war or disaster. On the micro level, the arts are a method to enable the retrieval and reprocessing of traumatic memories that are often encoded in images rather than in words. On a macro level, they can help to reconstruct a group narrative of a disaster as well as mobilise people back into control of their lives. This paper researches a long‐term project using arts in Sri Lanka following the civil war and tsunami. A central finding is the need to understand arts within their cultural context, and their usefulness in strengthening the voices and problem‐solving capacities of the victims of the disaster. |
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| Keywords: | arts in disaster intervention arts‐based research culturally sensitive disaster intervention |
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