About Values for Cohesion

By building on the traditional roots of Karagöz and Hacivat Shadow Plays, Values for Cohesion: In the Shadow of Karagöz and Hacivat will use the power of storytelling to address two key objectives aligned with the call of the Community Recovery Small Grants Fund. Firstly, it will help build connections between communities, especially between the West Midlands Turkish Community and the wider British community. Secondly, it will help strengthen resilience to mis/disinformation in Birmingham schools and the local community. The project will conduct workshops with teachers and community members, using the Turkish Karagöz-Hacivat Show Play as an intangible cultural heritage element for value developing and teaching.

Objectives

The project includes three research objectives:

1. To co-develop an understanding of British values for community cohesion,
2. To support schools and communities by co-designing a Teachers’ Guidebook and a Community Guidebook with a toolkit to tackle mis/disinformation in schools and communities, and
3. To co-generate sustainable impact on community-developing and resilience-building.
   
   

To achieve these objectives, the project collaborates with Birmingham schools (secondary), a teachers’ union (Birmingham) and an ethnic minority charity (West Midlands Turkish Association). To connect communities and build resilience, the project centres the voice of teachers, communities, and young people in determining what British values are, how cohesion can be ensured, and with which tools school staff, community members, and young people can be equipped to challenge mis/disinformation in and out of schools.

Our work

The project includes three work packages:

1. Two workshops with teachers (of schools and the union) and with WMTA members to develop a ‘Mis/Disinformation Toolkit’, a Teachers’ Guidebook, and a Community Guidebook on how to tackle mis/disinformation in schools to improve knowledge about minoritised communities and immigrants and challenge conspiracy theories to reduce tensions between pupils of different minority background, along with two peer-reviewed journal articles,
2. Staging a Karagöz-Hacivat Shadow Play (Turkish Shadow Play) with WMTA for Turkish community and youth (and youth from other communities) to teach shared values that could also be considered as British values.
3. Developing project podcast series to be added to the ‘Mis/Disinformation Toolkit’ of schools, Teachers’ Guidance of schools and teacher unions, and Community Guidance and the websites of WMTA and other community organisations.