Performing Empowerment

Performing Inclusion

This follow-on project is funded by the British Council in Sri Lanka. It continues the collaboration among Dr Lars Waldorf (Dundee Law School), Dr Hetty Blades (Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University), and VisAbility, a German-Sri Lankan association that combines inclusive dance and rights-awareness to empower disabled people and to challenge social attitudes towards disability.

This project differs from the Performing Empowerment project in three key ways:

• This time, VisAbility is conducting shorter, community-based workshops and performances within specific villages – two near Batticaloa and one near Jaffna – in February 2019. So, whereas the earlier project focused on whether disabled workshop participants were becoming more empowered, this project examines how local communities and audiences are responding to the workshops and performances. Vipavinee Artpradid (also from Coventry’s Centre for Dance Research) has joined the research team to help design and implement audience research.
• The research team has recruited 11 Sri Lankan researchers (six in Batticaloa and five in Jaffna) to help do audience research. It also has facilitated peer learning sessions in which the UK and Sri Lankan researchers can learn from one another about applying research methods in cross-cultural contexts.
• The research team and VisAbility are holding roundtable discussions with local officials, Disability People’s Organizations, disability NGOs, service providers, and other interested persons in Batticaloa and Jaffna.

Several institutions provided crucial support for this project:

• British Council in Sri Lanka
• British Council’s Jaffna office
• American Corner and Jaffna Social Action Centre (Jaffna)
• Miani Technical Institute (Batticaloa)

The research will produce an evidence-base on linking legal empowerment with participatory performance to reduce extreme poverty and social exclusion for persons with conflict-related disabilities. The impact will be to inform policymakers, practitioners, and donors on how to scale up such interventions in Sri Lanka and similar post-conflict states like Myanmar and Nepal.

The specific project outputs will include: two journal articles, a policy briefing, a practitioner resource, and short documentary videos. These will be added to this website as they become available.

This list of resources is meant to be representative and suggestive rather than inclusive. It is meant to provide a starting point for other advocates and researchers interested in disability, dance, and law in Sri Lanka.

Dance

• Adam Benjamin, Making an Entrance: Theory and Practice for Disabled and Non-Disabled Dancers (Routledge 2001)
• Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-Phim (eds.), Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press 2008)
• Sara Houston, ‘Participation in community dance: A road to empowerment and transformation?’ New Theatre Quarterly, 21(2), pp.166-177 (.pdf)
• Susan A. Reed, Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual and Politics in Sri Lanka (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010)

Disability and Disability Rights in Sri Lanka

• Zahabia Adamaly et al., “Submission to Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reforms," 29 February 2016, (.pdf).
• Francesca Bombi, “Perception and protection in Sri Lanka,” Forced Migration Review 35 (2010), (.pdf).
• Fiona Kumari Campbell, “Geodisability Knowledge Production and International Norms: a Sri Lankan case study,” Third World Quarterly 32:8 (2011), (.pdf).
• Disability Organizations Joint Front, “The State of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Sri Lanka,” Shadow Report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, April 2017, (.pdf).
• International Centre for Ethnic Studies, “Sri Lanka: Women Living with Disabilities,” Shadow Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, January 2017, (.pdf).
• Niro Kandasamy, Karen Soldatic & Dinesha Samararatne, “Peace, justice and disabled women’s advocacy: Tamil women with disabilities in rural post-conflict Sri Lanka,” Medicine, Conflict, and Survival 33:1 (2017), (.pdf).

Legal Empowerment and Disability

• Johan Borg, et al., “Is ‘legal empowerment of the poor’ relevant to people with disabilities in developing countries? An empirical and normative review,” Global Health Action (2013), (.pdf)
• Fiona Kumari Campbell, “A Review of Disability Law and Legal Mobilisation in Sri Lanka,” Law & Society Trust Review 23:308 (2013), (.pdf).
• Janet E. Lord and Michael Ashley Stein, “Peacebuilding and reintegrating ex-combatants with disabilities,” International Journal of Human Rights 19:3 (2015), (.pdf).

Methodology

• Nanja van Dop, et al., “Measuring Empowerment: Development and Validation of the Service User Psychological Empowerment Scale,” Journal of Social Service Research, 42:5 (2016), (.pdf).
• Simone Lombardini and Marcella Vigneri, Women’s Empowerment in Lebanon: Impact evaluation of the project ‘Women’s access to justice in the Middle East and North Africa region’ (Oxfam, 2015), (.pdf).
• Robert B. Porter, “Measurement of legal empowerment through the subjective perceptions of individuals,” Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 32:3 (2014), (.pdf).