INCLUDE US IN PALESTINE

Include Us In Palestine began as a collaboration between Dr Meg Peterson and Nadine Aranki, a co-researcher from The Palestinian Museum, exploring the role of creativity amongst artists and entrepreneurs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The pilot was funded by King's College London's Participatory Research fund in July 2023. 

Include Us In builds upon previous research exploring connections between creativity, social change and entrepreneurship, looking at motivation and success factors for artists, entrepreneurs and cultural organisations in a diverse range of environments, particularly ones with many limitations. The project involved a series of interviews to better understand the relationship between creativity, social change, political systems and being entrepreneurial based upon a framework examining artistic innovation, social change, economic prosperity and institutional development. The research was be exploratory in nature, laying the foundation for a future, larger project. In particular, this project examined the political nature of entrepreneurship especially in the context of Palestine, focusing on but not limited to the importance of art as expression, the preservation of cultural heritage and traditions, entrepreneurship as empowerment and the role of creativity in social change.

The events following 7 October changed the course of the research, making much of the findings irrelevant but more research is still to come to better understand and share the complex world of working the creative industries. The second phase of the project has also been postponed but will focus on contributing to entrepreneurship programmes with Palestine-based organisation, Jafra Productions. 

My positionality as a researcher was also a key element of the the work from an auto-ethnographic point of view. To read more about my day-to-day experience, my journal can be found below.