CGF Consortium meets at Rhodes

At the half-way stage of Common Good First, the project partners met in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa, generously hosted by Rhodes University and the Community Engagement Division there.

The key areas for discussion were progress on recruiting our community partners for the CGF network, updating the group on the three digital storytelling pilots which have taken place so far and beginning to scope out the digital labs which will be launched in three South African provinces between now and September 2019.

Rhodes University has really engaged with digital storytelling and the CGF group sat in on a story circle taking place at the School of Journalism and Media Studies, where participants from a range of South African universities and civil society were creating their stories.  CGF partners from UWC and USN shared their experiences of running pilots in Cape Town and Norway respectively, and we were shown one of the stories created at Rhodes by Pam, a youth worker in Grahamstown.

We also had a fascinating presentation about the state of South African education from Ashley Westaway of the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes where he showed us a thought-provoking documentary on the inequality of schools in Grahamstown.

As well as our meetings, the group were invited to a community supper in Joza township, with traditional food and very impressive acapella singing from Sensation 6 (although only five on the night).

The meeting ended with some forward planning for our next meetings at the University of Alicante, University of Johannesburg and some thinking around our final dissemination event in October 2019 at the University of the Western Cape. And, of course, huge thanks must go to our colleagues, Di Hornby, Sharli Paphitis and the Community Engagement team for their hospitality and generosity.

As ever, we created a video of our time together, produced by Will at Bundu Media.