Arts for Advocacy

‘Arts for Advocacy’ is an inter-disciplinary research project funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund at the universities of Edinburgh and Keele.

The project seeks to develop innovative, interdisciplinary, and participatory arts-based methods to facilitate critical engagement and advocacy relating to forced displacement in Morocco.

Morocco has become a country of transit and immigration, notably for sub-Saharan migrants fleeing a range of socio-economic and political precariousness as well as more recently for those fleeing the enduring conflict in Syria. Morocco is also a strategic partner for the EU and some of its individual members, such as Spain, in the ‘management’ of migration across the Mediterranean.

Although Morocco has featured little in recent depictions of the ‘migration crisis’, more research is needed to examine unravelling changes especially since the announcement by the Moroccan King of a more ‘humanitarian’ approach to migration in 2013. In this context, issues pertaining to interculturality, migrants’ rights, violence, and racism in Morocco crucially require new modes of engagement for both research and advocacy.

Find out about the project at artsforadvocacy.org and the Responding to Crisis network website.