< Go Back

Interventions through interdisciplinary co-creation and narrative approaches

This initiative brings together scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines, with interconnecting interests in narrative and its social and cultural impacts to use storytelling and context awareness as tools in constructing interventions. The project seeks to identify new ways of using narrative intervention as a standalone or synergistic component of an intervention package for adolescents in African contexts, with a view to improving multiple outcomes. It hopes to explain how we can practically integrate storytelling into social and economic intervention by answering the key questions: To what extent do you think storytelling can be an intervention for adolescents in African contexts? Do we see this as a standalone intervention or part of a package of interventions? Or possibly both? Bearing in mind the power behind storytelling and the potential for it to positively influence an adolescent’s sense of self, this project wants to look at designing an intervention that could lead to positive outcomes in multiple spheres of their lives. Can the interventions that already exist incorporate a storytelling element—extra time for storytelling; social workers trained as storytellers and -listeners, using creative ‘third objects’ (films, social media clips, recordings, etc.) – that would help to accelerate those interventions?

Team:

Professor Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
Dr Chris Desmond (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Dr Upile Chisala (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Dr Hillary Musarurwa (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

< Go Back