Developing a Methodology Guide pre-proceedings
The workshop Culture and Safety in Africa: Developing a Methodology Guide aims at producing a methodology guide to analyse the impact of culture on urban satefy in Africa, and to develop the necessary and specific research tools for future research.
The workshop focuses on sociological and urban factors, questions, and comparable elements, and it considers the specific contexts of Douala in Cameroon, Luanda in Angola, and Johannesburg in South Africa. The parallel sessions address the subjects with a focus on micro vs. macro and positive vs. negative effects of arts and culture on urban safety, documenting the status of points of interest, neighborhoods and cities before and after events or installations take place.

The methodology guide includes a list of questions for interviewees, criteria to measure on site, a checklist of materials to collect.
 
1. Which information is necessary to describe cultural events and public art? Which elements need to be described? Which sources can be used? Which are the questions that need to be addressed? Which tool can we use to present/represent this information?
 
2. Which information is necessary to describe in a urban context safety and security and unsafely and insecurity? Which sources can be used? Which are the questions that need to be addressed? How is it possible to identify and describe a change in safety and security? Which tool can we use to present/represent this information?
 
3. Which are the results expected from the research by the different institutions involved? How is it possible to allow the institutions to benefit the most from the research? Which are the critical point of such a research? Can the research produce negative effect? Is the independence and the experimentation of culture in danger? Three researchers will use the methodology guide in 2012 and 2013 in Douala, Johannesburg and Luanda. They are asked to gather information on public art, cultural events and urban safety in those cities and to develop further a series of specific case studies. The methodology
guide will also be used as a support for comparative analysis. The idea of the methodology guide relays on the experience of the African Copyright and
Access to Knowledge (aca2k) methodology guide (http://www.aca2k.org/) and it develops it further by adapting it to the specific needs of the present research.
 
Expected results
The workshop collects daily reports and gathers data, factors and a list of questions and stakeholders to be addressed during field research.
The methodology guide will be published in its first edition by June 2012 with a creative commons attribution share-alike license. A second edition amended by the internal advisors and external evaluators will be released by the end of 2013. A paper on the development of the methodology guide is planned as an application to the call for papers for the African Cities Reader, a series of books published by Chimurenga and the African Centre for Cities.
 
Program
A set of short keynote speeches on case studies and on existing international projects opens each day. Each day is organized with plenary sessions and small working groups. Each group produces deliverables, reports and visual documentation.