This project uses the arts as a way to facilitate communication between citizens and policy actors, on issues of environmentally sustainable development. The project will establish a network of people across Africa to trial this, learn about how it works in different places, and even achieve policy impact in relation to live environmental issues that concern them. It draws on two previously funded AHRC projects. In our previous projects, we found that various art forms, including song and music, photography, sculpture and plays, can be used to facilitate dialogue between citizens and policy actors. Often, policy actors communicate directives 'down' to citizens, citizens communicate concerns directly 'up' to policy actors, or citizens agitate through art to create public pressure on policy actors. Rarely, co-creation of understanding between these actors may take place. The project will create a network of people across five countries: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Ghana and Kenya. We will bring together artists, citizen groups, researchers and policy actors from each country. These network members will organise national level workshops, each one based on a specific theme of concern to environmentally sustainable development. These include: changes to pastoral livelihoods in the contexts of climate change, the role of apiculture, flooding, desertification, and farming in the context of sea level rise. The theme running through these issues is development in the context of climate change. Artists will facilitate an artistic or cultural activity, such as production of a song or photographs, through which citizens and policy actors will share ideas and perspectives on these issues. They will work towards specific policy actions that need to happen. The exact format each workshop will take is decided at national level by the workshop participants before and during the workshop. It will be guided by the work we did in previous projects. We will share our national level artworks on a group digital space, and have an online dialogue session where all international participants learn about each other's experiences. This will help us all understand what worked in different places and how, and the different roles the arts can play in facilitating communication between citizens and policy. We will actively invite other groups to view our works, attend our online exhibition/ performances, and join our network by sharing their own experiences This is a truly novel activity, especially in our study contexts, and it has the potential to engender powerful changes. Academic research has begun to consider the role of the arts and humanities in building and understanding climate change scenarios, and the different meanings people ascribe to different environmental futures. But, these approaches are fairly new in the East and West African contexts, and have not been widely applied to other environmental issues or beyond scenario building. The work therefore has potential to make significant changes. It will also be challenging: our former work found that entrenched hierarchies and sectoral silos can prevent transdisciplinary change. This work will show whether these need to be challenged for the arts to make policy impact. The website hosting our outputs will remain live after the project lifetime. The network will continue to function through it, meaning that this work can go on to develop into other national or international projects, and have enduring impact.

The context of the research. In both East and West Africa, pastoralism is an important livelihood activity. For groups such as the Fulani (West Africa) and Ilchamus (East Africa), it is an ethnoprofessional activity, sometimes combined with agriculture in agropastoralism. For many groups, pastoralism or agropastoralism entails a unique culture, many aspects of which are connected to food production, processing, exchange and consumption activities. Anthropological research has focused on agropastoralist food cultures, for example describing how cultures and practices of food production, processing, trade and consumption have adapted as pastoralist people have engaged over centuries with local and international markets, in global contexts of technological change. In recent decades, agropastoralist livelihoods have continued to change, in the context of continent-wide agricultural policy favouring commercialisation, modernisation and formalisation of the agricultural and livestock sectors. There is a noticeable disconnect between many policies dealing with livestock sector commercialisation and modernisation, and research on agropastoralist food culture, despite the practices of production and consumption which connect them. For example, proposed commercialisation of the dairy sector is sometimes difficult to connect to gendered associations of milk trade in the cultures of people such as the Fulani. The results is that pastoralist people, and specific groups such as women or those of given ethnicities, may not fully benefit from livestock sector development, or may even be disadvantaged. So, there is a need to draw connections between research on food cultures of pastoralism and development oriented policy on the livestock sector in Africa. The aims and objectives of the work. This exploratory research aims to define a new research agenda for connecting policy on livestock sector development to research on agropastoralist food cultures. The project convenes a group of relevant stakeholders - policy makers and implementers, researchers, development actors, and local community representatives - from East and West Africa. Together, they co-construct understandings of agropastoral food cultures, through participatory photography and desk research on a case study of milk and the dairy sector. The results are shared in a seminar modelled on the local meeting forum, the Baraza. A Baraza entails community members and representatives, opinion leaders, policy actors and other relevant parties convening to debate issues such as policy moves, usually in a public place such as a market. Through a Baraza style seminar, the project aims to encourage these groups to work more closely together to incorporate community perspectives, and research on them, into policy making and implementation. Key messages are then shared to the wider community and policy sector. This aims to define a clearer agenda and raise support for follow-up research. The potential applications and benefits or the research. The short term benefit of this work is that awareness will be raised, among all groups, of the gaps that exist between research on agropastoralist food cultures, and policy approaches to livestock sector commercialisation. Community members will enhance their abilities to advocate to policy makers, and within their communities. In the medium term, policy makers will be more cognisant of how to work with research and consider culture, and researchers will have a better understanding of how to engage with policy actors on this theme. In the longer term, there may be more relevant and culturally informed policy on livestock sector commercialisation, leading to better outcomes for pastoralists.