Conference location: University of Malawi, Zomba
Conference date: Wednesday May 15, 2024
Abstract deadline: Extended to Friday April 26th, 2024
What does sustainable development look like? As the pot of global funding for traditional development shrinks and a neoliberal sense of competition between NGOs becomes the norm, and as NGOs report a sense that they are being asked to more with less, pushed into new projects rather than core work, how can ‘sustainable’ communication and development be reclaimed and reimagined?
This conference invites presentations and creative exhibits (films, posters, poems, songs, etc.) that reflect on and critique dominant discourses of sustainable (communication for) development, and that explore and image alternative ways of doing and funding communication and development.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
- Discourses of sustainability, contested meanings
- Projectification of development vs core work
- Precarity and competition, vs solidarity
- Funding decisions and communication in development
- Reflections on the localization agenda/ #shiftthepower movement, and broader issues of power dynamics
- Financing models, such as social enterprise, CSR, philanthropy, co-operatives, etc.
- Community experiences of sustainable projects.
This conference has a focus on the above concerns in relation to communication and development. This include a wide variety of forms such as theatre for development, radio, video, community-led development and social mobilisation, edutainment, empowerment, and more.
Email an abstract of your presentation/ exhibit to j.noske-turner@lboro.ac.uk, subject line Sustainability Conference, by April 26th. Abstract should be approximately 200 words. Creative exhibit proposals can include images, songs, videos and other media.