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DEPA – South Africa PhotoVoice

dataset

posted on 2024-03-12, 11:20 authored by South Africa Project Team

The main aim of the Photovoice Project was to empower youth in townships surrounding Johannesburg to capture and share visual narratives about the factors influencing peace and conflict in their communities. At its core, the Photovoice Project was a form of participatory visual storytelling. It asked young people to use their smartphones as tools for social critique, capturing elements of peace and conflict in their daily lives through the medium of photography.

Given that Johannesburg's townships are often perceived through a narrow lens of poverty, crime, and unrest, this initiative provided the youth with an opportunity to reframe the narrative. The power of the Photovoice Project lay not just in the images themselves, but also in the perspectives they revealed—a juxtaposition of resilience and struggle, of unity and discord, all seen through the eyes of the next generation. As part of the project, the youth participants were encouraged to snap photographs that spoke to them, whether it was a moment of community solidarity, the visible impact of systemic inequity, or an instance of violence. The photos ranged from captures of vibrant street art that articulated community aspirations, to more sombre subjects like deserted playgrounds or vigil memorials, each telling a unique story of the circumstances that shape peace and conflict in their lives.

The 19 files in this item are the photographs selected by each of the project participants to represent their understanding of peace and conflict in their community.

The South Africa Project was one of the original Proof of Concept projects with DEPA (Decolonising Education for Peace in Africa). DEPA was a 4 year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC) addressing the question: What are the different knowledges and values underpinning peace and how can these practices be connected and compared across countries to create curriculum content and mode of delivery in informal and formal settings, Secondary and Higher Education (HE), in order to decolonise peace education?