Insight
Keeping popular
culture alive!
Innovative work in
Burkina Faso
UNAIS to launch Supporter
Scheme
Volume 1 Issue 3
Sept/Oct/Nov 1996
Eleanor Smithies first went to Burkina Faso in 1993
to work as a UNAIS Community Development
Worker with l'Assocation d'Appui et de Promotion
Rurale du Gulmu (APRG). She writes about her
innovative work with one of the 40 farmer groups
that APRG works with across Burkina Faso's three
eastern provinces.
Burkina Faso had a meningitis epidemic. Outside the
clinic at Tangaye, seeking shade under the mango
trees, a queue of two thousand waited, needles in hand,
for their vaccinations. Our volunteer actors were
among them. Health took priority over video-making
that day.
My colleague Adiara Rabo and I had just travelled 45
kilometres from our base at Fada N'Gourma. Not too
big a distance on our motor cycles - the camera is light
and the roads are good.
Eleanor Smithies with APRG farmer group
APRG has been making videos for three years now. We
make them simply: one camera, one VCR, one TV and
a portable generator. For a long time the villagers of
Tangaye had worked with APRG on local development
activities: cereal banks, soil conservation, rural credit,
soap-making, literacy training, tree planting and gender
issues. If we could tape such activities, their experience
could be shared with other villages working with
APRG.
Last year Adiara and local villagers discussed making a
small film about literacy and gender. Adiara's experience
in video making and theatre workshops led her to favour
Continued on page 6
UNAIS Project worker Ros Young has been work
ing in institutional development with the Popular Art
Centre in Al-Bireh, West Bank, since October 1994.
She explains the significance of culture in sustaining
Palestinian identity and the work of the Centre in
promoting this aspect of national life.
Keeping popular culture alive, particularly through folk-
loric dance dabkeand traditional music, has been a
critical component of promoting Palestinian national
identity; critical because the occupation has undermined
people's confidence, individually and collectively. Cul
ture became a way of keeping traditions alive, of pro
moting the nationalist struggle and resisting the occu
pation. Culture and art took on a vibrant role in resist
ing the occupation, and writers, artists, dancers and
musicians were often imprisoned for celebrating Pales
tinian tradition and identity.
During the Intifadamost forms of celebration, culture
and entertainment - public or private - were considered
improper out of respect for those killed in the struggle.
The few cinemas and theatres were closed and a whole
generation lost any cultural or artistic stimulus.
The Popular Art Centre was one of the few cultural
organisations which kept going through this period, al
though with a much restricted programme. Its found
ers were key members of the Al-Fanoun As-Shaabiyeh
Continued on page 6
Going back to the first edition of Insight (March
1996), we led with an article about our strategic
plan. This includes diversifying our fundraising and
increasing development education in the UK.
In order to achieve these aims we are in the proc
ess of setting up a Working Group to see how
UNAIS might position itself within the arena of
international development agencies based in the
UK. See page 2 for further details.