Performing for peace: mobilising cultural assets to leave the Mursi in peace with no-one left behind

Democracy is unfinished business and our struggles to be inclusive are cultural as much as political. The need for creating better relationships, education and engagement between representatives and represented is critical to every nation claiming to be democratic. Decent representation of highly marginalised and stigmatised minority groups remains challenging around the globe.

Two strategies will be indispensable to making progress on this agenda. First, as SDG 16 outlines, better information for integrated decision-making and participation will enable political institutions to become more inclusive. Secondly, international research coalitions need to put into practice the principles of equitable and multi-stakeholder international partnership as well as commitments to capacity-building contained within SDG 17.

This project will innovate with indigenous theatre and film to educate policymakers about the political rights of a specific minority group - the Mursi in South Omo - but by extension all marginalised peoples and persuade them that they should be left in peace but with no one left behind.

This coalition, composed of scholars from SOAS's Global Research Network on Parliaments and People and Wolkite University, film-makers and theatre professionals from the South Omo Theatre Company, and members of the Mursi community in Southern Ethiopia, aim to: deepen understanding, political engagement and representation for highly stigmatised groups; champion the use of arts in deepening democracy and peacebuilding; and learn about decolonising partnerships. Building on an existing two year partnership, this follow-on grant will enable us to fulfil the vision explained in a short film by Mursi pastoralist and film-maker Olisalari Olibui Tolongu and the playwright Tesfahun Haddis Hailu (see https://grnpp.org/olisarali/).

The Mursi in Ethiopia are engaging with this democratic need through collaborative, research-based and multimedia means: ethnography, documentary film and indigenous theatre to educate policy-makers and the public about their political challenges and solutions. The play has been written, women and men of the Mursi community have been recruited as actors, the network created, and the South Omo Theatre Company poised to perform and broadcast its recommendations.

This follow-on grant would enable this coalition to tour the play culminating in a performance at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa, show a recorded version in universities, and make a film documenting the process to be broadcast widely in Ethiopia and the UK. The team will hold high level dialogues with policy-makers and communicate learning through blogs, social media, two academic articles and various websites and networks in Ethiopia and the UK.

With civil society partners, they will promote a more holistic approach to promotion minority rights and peacebuilding with indigenous groups. Confronting complex and sensitive issues of violence, gender inequality and racism at a delicate time in the politics of Ethiopia is possible because this team has substantial experience of working in Southern Ethiopia, conflict-affected states and risky political environments as well as the use of the arts in peacebuilding.

The impact of this initiative would be to enhance the representation of a specific marginalised group - the Mursi in South Omo, Ethiopia - by mobilising cultural assets and more specifically reimaging politics through the use of theatre, film and advocacy, including policy dialogues, a symposium and digital media. By generating evidence and sharing learning about using cultural assets for peacebuliding with minority groups and decolonising global partnerships, the impact will extend far beyond the specific group of the Mursi to any group marginalised by conflict over land, ethnicity, remoteness, and indigeneity.

This could be of huge value to other groups seeking means to argue for strategies to be left in peace but avoid being left behin