•  
  •  
 

Abstract

The Acholi of northern Uganda, whose cultural heritage is rich in literature and the performing arts, are emerging from more than two decades of war, and there is a desire and need to nurture a culture of peace. Over the last four years, numerous organizations and individuals in Uganda have incorporated the arts into conflict resolution, community reconciliation, and psycho-social healing. These creative approaches, designed to encourage reconciliation, have varied enormously, as have the degrees to which northern communities have accepted and taken ownership of them. A careful analysis of their resonance and impacts has been largely overlooked and underrepresented in scholarship. Therefore, based on research conducted in Uganda from 2007 to 2009, the influx of projects involving the creative arts are comparatively and critically evaluated by assessing what is global, what is local, and what is gender-, place-, and age-specific, as well as how the projects’ funding sources affect their short- and long-term sustainability. This paper concludes with recommendations for future programs rooted in the arts and possible implications of this evaluation for other post-conflict reconstruction strategies in Africa today.

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.