Seeds Of The Future/Somali Programme: a shared autoethnography on using creative arts therapies to work with Somali voices in Female Genital Mutilation refusal in the UK

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a project, Seeds Of The Future/Somali Programme, which took place in June 2015. In the project, the disciplines of dramatherapy and creative writing were used in fusion in a series of workshops to gather testimony from Somali men, women and adolescent girls about their commitment to moving away from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a community. These stories have been translated into Somali and podcast, so that they can be used at a grassroots level in the anti-FGM campaign to persuade newly arrived/non-English-speaking Somali immigrants that the British Somali community is rapidly transitioning away from FGM, and thereby reduce or prevent cutting of young Somali girls. The paper explains the need for effective Somali-language testimony, and how the project was executed. It also includes memoir and testimony from the workshop participants themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Somali
• female
• mutilation
• Midaye
• genital
• refusal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Penny was born and grew up in South Africa. She lectures in Creative Writing at Brunel University, and is a novelist and an activist for social change. She has previously worked with supporting communities to transition from FGM but is now focused on working with educating South African learners about xenophobia. Sarah has published three books with Penguin South Africa. She is a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow. Sarah did her PhD on the treatment of sangomas in literature, and is currently studying the MsC in Using Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at the Metanoia Institute.

Paula Kingwill graduated in 2000 with a Masters in Dramatherapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies, USA. She worked for 10 years with a range of client populations in and around Cape Town and was a founding member and director of The Bonfire Theatre Company until 2010. She now lives and works in the Karoo where she continues to work as a dramatherapist but is also a cattle farmer and mother of two children. She has made two documentary films on dramatherapy in South Africa.