Youth as knowledge producers: Arts-based approaches to HIV and AIDS prevention and education in rural KwaZulu-Natal
Jean Stuart, Naydene de Lange, Lebo Moletsane, Thabisile Buthelezi, Rob Pattman and Claudia Mitchell.
HIV/AIDS is now recognized as a global crisis, particularly among youth, with young women emerging as the most vulnerable group. In KwaZulu-Natal, a province in South Africa that is at the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, the estimates now are that between 37 and 47 per cent of all cases are women between the ages of 15 and 24. And while there are a vast range of interventions throughout the country that target youth both in schools and in communities, a recent study funded by the HSRC found that in actual fact most interventions are having little affect on the behaviour of young people. Young men are not using condoms and there is a great deal of gender violence in and around schools and communities.
Recent work on health promotion in the area of HIV and AIDS suggests that unless young people are given a more significant voice in participating in policy dialogue about their own health, and sexuality, and in producing (and disseminating) locally relevant gender sensitive messages, prevention and awareness programs organized 'from the outside' (i.e., by adults, donors and so on) are doomed to failure.
Youth as Knowledge Producers asks three main questions:
(1) How can arts-based methodologies be used with young people in rural schools to create a more youth-focused and learner-centred approach to knowledge production and behaviour change in the context of HIV and AIDS?;
(2) How can a Faculty of Education effectively set up a partnership to work with young people who are beginning teachers and a cohort of practicing teachers and principals and community health workers to contribute to the support of learner-centred arts based approaches to addressing HIV and AIDS;
(3) What tools and approaches can we use to study the impact of these various arts-based approaches within HIV and AIDS education and prevention interventions?
Overall our study aims to engage in what Schratz and Walker would describe as 'research as social change' through the study of a set of arts-based interventions involving a cohort of beginning teachers, who are themselves young people, and a group of learners and practicing teachers and principals in several rural schools. In posing three main questions, one on arts-based participatory methodologies with young people, one on teacher development and the support to a group of beginning teachers and practicing teachers and principals working with young people, and one on impact and evidence, the study will consider how a shared dialogue between and amongst various sectors working within the same community and in relation to the same target population can contribute to an deepening our understanding of youth engagement in addressing HIV and AIDS.
