This project examines, tests and innovates – effectively reharbours – living marine cultural heritage in southern Madagascar through the expressive participatory arts: specifically puppetry, dance, visual arts and ethnodrama, and traditional design and modern craftwork. The approach will involve UK artists working alongside artists in Madagascar to realise living marine cultural heritage related festival projects in the regional centre Tolarno and in and around Sainte Luce (Madagascar) and neighbouring Antanosy fishing communities. UK and Malagasy artists will develop networks of relations, and new modes and methods of practice in this participatory arts knowledge exchange. They will complement existing sustainable development projects and local festivals, and engage with important local issues, namely: poverty, cultural heritage, marine resource management, and social, gender and educational inequality. These will be addressed through the community, using the expressive arts to develop local marine cultural heritage as a resource for personal and community resilience. Best practice sustainable lobster fisheries management measures will be disseminated regionally through the medium of puppetry and the creation of a community comic book. The project will also have a unique ‘festival of the sea’ contribution to the local Feria Oramena seafood festival in June, using dance, ethnodrama and the digital and craft arts to raise awareness of fishing community issues and show how a living marine cultural heritage contributes to tourism-related social enterprise in the region. Dissemination of the project work and results will be through social media, exhibition, performance, and public talks and two articles in academic journals.
Location: Madagascar
PI: Jonathan Skinner (University of Surrey)
Co-Is: Lisa Bass (SEED Madagascar)
Size: Large
Rising from the Depths Network Meeting, York, October 2019