Free education for more than one million around the globe

16 Nov 2015

University to deliver creative entrepreneurial course for people in areas of conflict across Africa, the Middle East and South America

More than one million young people in some of the world’s poorest and most troubled communities will receive free education from The University of Manchester.

The University is to open a series of cultural spaces and deliver a new creative entrepreneurial course for people living in areas of conflict across Africa, the Middle East and South America.

The entrepreneurial programme will provide an escape through music and the arts and an internationally-recognised qualification for citizens whose lives might otherwise be torn apart by troubles and unrest, laying the foundations to grow their local economies and train up their own communities.

It will be delivered by In Place of War (IPOW) – an award-winning University initiative which has worked for ten years, with the support of music industry figures, to bring opportunities through music, art, theatre and dance to sites of conflict, war and social upheaval.

The new work will be delivered thanks to more than £360,000 worth of funding awards from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust and will reach 25 countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Egypt, Lebanon, Columbia and Brazil.

Ruth Daniel, IPOW co-director, said: “This work will change lives in some of the most disrupted and disconnected parts of the globe. Over ten years of research and fieldwork we have seen the positive difference that the facilitating the arts can make in sites of conflict. Thanks to this funding, we can now turn that into real education and training opportunities with the potential to enhance local economies and take people out of deprivation by connecting with people both in other areas of unrest and far beyond.

“As academics, it also provides us with a continued evidence base with which to understand the role that this type of intervention can play for people living through war and upheaval.”

University Associate Vice President for Social Responsibility and IPOW co-director, Professor James Thompson, added: “I’m delighted that In Place of War has received three different grants recently – this gives us the chance to develop new international partners for culture centres in conflict zones and expand our arts education programmes for young people in the Middle East and internationally. Ten years of research and practice and we now have a great staff team delivering all these projects.”