Nkwihoreze: Intergenerational Creative Arts and Healing in Rwanda

This project is a creative arts and healing programme for children aged 6-17, their families and psychosocial workers in Rwanda.

The project runs from January to December 2024 and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) follow-on funding for impact and engagement.

Background
Methodology
Outputs
Team
Related links
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Background

‘Nkwihoreze’ (meaning "taking care and strengthening one another" in Kinyarwanda) is a creative arts and healing programme for children (aged 6-17), their families and psychosocial workers in Rwanda. This innovative, demand-led programme responds to the needs for creative and supportive intergenerational spaces, materials and training on trauma, memory, and healing identified in our previous research: "Connective Memories (CM): Intergenerational Expressions in Contemporary Rwanda" (see Pells et al. 2022).

Methodology

The project is working with 160 families across four districts in Rwanda through a series of arts-based workshops, with children (aged 6-12 and 12-17), then with parents, and then children together with their parent(s). The workshops are facilitated by young people, artists and psychosocial workers. Methods for delivering the workshops and evaluation research include storytelling, proverbs, poems, songs, and drawings. The materials developed will be used for a co-curated travelling public exhibition, and professional training for psychosocial workers.

This collaborative research and engagement project works closely with local communities through local partners UNM (Uyisenga Ni Imanzi) and AERG (Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés Du Genocide).

Outputs

An online version of the exhibition and other outputs are available on the Nkwihoreze project website.

Team

Leaders

Dr Kirrily Pells, Associate Professor of Childhood, UCL Social Research Institute, Co-Principal Investigator
Dr Chaste Uwihoreye, Clinical Psychologist, Uyisenga Ni Imanzi, Rwanda, Co-Principal Investigator

Members

Jean Marie Vianney Zivugukuri, Clinical Psychologist, UNM, Project Coordinator/Research Assistant
Kristýna Skriczka, UCL Social Research Institute, Knowledge Exchange Officer
Dr Yuko Otake, UCL Social Research Institute, Research Fellow

Project partners

Uyisenga Ni Imanzi (UNM)
Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés Du Genocide (AERG)