This paper will report on a study that extends existing research on how young people have been impacted as ‘victims’ of political and sectarian conflict and which created opportunities for young people’s voices to be heard on matters of educational, social and political significance to them. This paper illustrates, summarises and evaluates aspects of a three year research and development project which was undertaken with students in post-primary schools (11-18 years) in a rural area of Northern Ireland which had seen some of the worst effects of the protracted political conflict known as the ‘Troubles’. The presentation will specifically address the various ways in which the research was designed creatively to centralise student voice in order to inform educational practices such as facilitating students on sensitive matters, children’s rights and how to promote more student-centred educational responses to conflict resolution, peace-building and the role of citizenship education in a society emerging from conflict.

The study comprises a qualitative, in-depth and multi-level research and development project within a participatory action research framework.Within this framework, arts-based inquiry and pedagogical processes involving creative expression were blended to form both the data collection media and the process of ‘articulating’ the contents of past and present experience and understanding and thus encourage participation by students in the research process.

The data will indicate that the young people, most of whom have been born since the ceasefires and political agreements of the1990s in this divided society, had significant personal experiences of the ongoing impact of the troubles (sectarianism, segregation etc) and were, in many cases, growing up in families directly affected by the violence. It also provided some evidence of how these creative approaches with young people facilitated a bridging of the private and public. The creative processes also permitted them safely to ‘speak’ of personal experience in the context of these wider social and political issues and the strength of their feelings about aspects of growing up in this post-conflict society in which various rights (UNCRC) have been interrupted or violated. Image-making, storying, intergenerational sharing, creative writing permitted young people, in the generality, to access their voices, to find ways of describing in form other than words, what they knew and felt and to develop the confidence and trust to break through the culture of silence in Northern Ireland in some cases for the first time and to indicate ways in which changes both educationally and politically could improve their future. Collage and drawings, in particular, were found to be most inclusive as a means to aiding voice. They communicated visually ( and relatively easily) young people’s ideas on the violent situation and helped to interrupt the ‘culture of silence’ surrounding the issues for young people: – by bringing to the surface individual views, stories, events and feelings that had been latent or inarticulate; – through sharing what had previously been considered ‘unsayable’ or easily silenced in educational or cross-community contexts;