There are many ways of understanding the adversity that people go through in a crisis such as a recession followed by increased poverty, a disaster or a war. In our research and teaching at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), we aim to capture some of the ways in which we can understand the causes of adversity, the consequences and ways to deal with development challenges and humanitarian emergencies. The experiences of people in the midst of such crises are important for our understanding of how to deal with it. In this context art helps us to understand.
The Oxford Human Rights Festival is in its 14th year. This year’s theme is adversity. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, ‘adversity’ means “a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune”. There are four sub-themes of the festival: Women in adversity; Environmental adversity and climate change; Fleeing adversity: refugees; Adversity closer to home. The festival is run by students on the MA and MArchD Development and Emergency Practice (run by CENDEP) and BA film Studies all at Oxford Brookes University. The Festival aims to raise awareness of human rights issues through the arts: feature films, short films and documentaries, speakers, music, literature, a workshop in traditional Palestinian Dabke dancing and the Women in Adversity exhibition in the Glass Tank.
This year’s festival-programme helps us to understand experiences of adversity in contexts of war, environmental disasters and oppression. A main theme of the festival is refugees and displacement. Through the events we are hosting, the festival enables insights into those embodied experiences of loss, the way people are forced to live with war and displacement in their homelands, but also their experiences of the refugee journey and how people make new lives in unfamiliar places and negotiate barriers in their host countries. The festival is also an inspiration for how we can resist the causes of adversity and work together for positive change.
When people live in adversity – as a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune – a strategy for some is to give up. As we know, some people simply do not make it through a crisis. There are too many barriers to negotiate, too much uncertainty to face. But most people do not give up without struggle. And a most important issue connected with the experiences the festival provides insight into, is the ways in which people not only survive but develop strategies to move on. How people manoeuvre the barriers and restrictions: how people want to live, want to change their own lives and others. We hope this festival will enable insights into what causes adversity in people’s lives such as government policies, armed conflict, environmental degradation and how people experience and negotiate the causes to their hardships and the barriers they face in surviving and moving on.
You can see the full programme of the
festival here: http://architecture.brookes.ac.uk/research/cendep/hrff.html
Photo from the Women in Adversity exhibition with involved students
