Multidisciplinary partnerships in community-specific writing or storytelling projects – A case study

Abstract

Partnerships are used as strategy in various sectors of society, especially in order to reach goals which are unattainable for independent individuals, institutions or academic disciplines. The complexity of community-specific creative writing and storytelling projects (including the variety of languages, literacy levels and socio-economic issues in the country, as well as practical aspects such as funding, access to communities et cetera) means that such projects cannot easily be run by individual persons or organisations but that collaboration is needed. The aim of this overview article is to investigate multidisciplinary partnerships in community projects which promote community-specific writing and storytelling, focusing on one such project in particular. As background the situation in South Africa with regard to writing and storytelling in communities is sketched. The focus then shifts to multidisciplinary partnerships. A case study is discussed to highlight the complexity of such partnerships. This article addresses the dearth of research on partnerships in the context of creative writing or storytelling projects in communities. Although multidisciplinary partnerships do have their challenges, the article concludes that they can bring balance and wealth to community development previously unexplored.