This project will equip care-experienced youth in Northern Ireland (NI) and South Africa (SA) with skills and connections for peer-led advocacy on shared priorities to inform policy transformation. It recognises a global community united by experiences of alternative care, but different in their cultural and geographical context.

SARC Director, Professor Pedro Rebelo has been working with colleagues in film (Professor Cahal McLaughlin) and Social Work (Dr Mandi MacDonald and Professor Berni Kelly). 

The project partners with University of Cape Town, South Africa. Project Partners VOYPIC (NI) and Mamelani (SA) mobilise and support youth engagement. We have been working together on participatory soundscape and film making. First phase of the project was a one week visit to Cape Town with the three academics, three young people and a staff member from VOYPIC.

Through shared learning, participatory arts practice and advocacy activities in NI and SA, the project will link care-experienced youth across global contexts with, social science and arts experts and care-leaver policy leads to amplify their voices and influence policy and practice. In-person workshops in both NI and SA will: build capacity for collaborative and youth-led advocacy; and co-produce films and soundscapes utilising participatory arts to make youth concerns visible and audible to various audiences through a shared advocacy campaign. The project will also establish an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral Networked Learning Community to create sustainable links for further co-production and advocacy.

Funded by AHRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration Funds, Queen's University Belfast.