Project

STORYTELLING THROUGH IMAGES: A REFLECTION/DISCUSSION PHOTOBOOK FOR YOUTH IN KENYA AND ETHIOPIA

Code
13v16724-19
Duration
01 September 2024 → 31 August 2025
Funding
Federal funding: VLIR-UOS
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • African literature
    • Oral literature
Keywords
Africa Ethiopia Kenya Oral storytelling Visualisation
 
Project description
This project will valorise the preliminary results of the VLIR-UOS-TEAM- project titled ‘Storytelling and Young People Coping with Crisis: Oral Narratives and Crisis Management in Kenya and Ethiopia’ (https://www.ol4d.ugent.be/) in the realm of Oral Literature for Development. OL4D is based on the belief that culture and creativity are central to all people’s development. There is a huge potential in the cultural-historical ways in which people have dealt with crisis situations through their history of oral literary expression, but at the same time many adolescents in Kenya and Ethiopia do not connect to this literary history when faced with crisis situations. Through performative learning procedures, the Team project aims at enabling young people to engage with living oral traditions of oral storytelling, thereby reflecting on the potentialities of crisis management in folktales and myths. As a valorisation of this project, the Team members of UGent, Howest, University of Nairobi and Jimma University aim to create a book with lively pictures of the storytellers/performances as well as of the workshops we undertook/will be undertaking. The images will be accompanied by the stories, in original language and translated into English. In the book, we will provide guidelines for discussion based on the visuals, and proposals for new ways of telling and performing the folktales and myths, based on the workshop experiences. In this way, teachers, youth organisations and other interested people can use the images to reflect with young people on how to deal with crisis situations.  The image/narrative book will also be a concrete way of conserving immaterial narrative heritage in an attractive and engaging way for Kenyan and Ethiopian adolescents.