The study of international development is, more often than not, a pseudo-scientific pursuit where students are asked to relate cause to effect, and plan interventions to address cause, effect or somewhere in between.  It’s narrow, focused on essential needs and lacking in context.  We talk a lot about ‘root’ causes, but I was never confident that I would know how to address these when the time came.  We talk about effect ad nauseum, usually in the following way:

Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children; In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a 42% drop in maize production from 2000.  As a result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger; Four million Angolans have been forced to flee their homes; more than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance. 

-          Excerpted from Poor Economics, Banerjee and Duflo, 2011 -

Note that the above tells us very little about Malawians, Ethiopians, Zambians or Angolans.  All we know is that many of them have little to no food on a daily basis.  We may even be led to believe that food shortages – which are political constructs – are the sole occupant of their minds throughout these enduring crises.  But, like humans everywhere, food or no food, there is art, music, relationships, politics, design, spirituality and careers.  In other words, there is always the lived experience.

These lived experiences may be less whole, less productive, less nourishing because so many are, indeed, severely calorically undernourished.  However, it behoves those students of development to engage with the show that goes on in the absence of essential basic need(s): food, shelter, water, sleep (for which peace is a prerequisite).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs uses these basics as a fundamental foundation of a theory of human development.  Without these things, humans cannot physically thrive.  However, without these things, humans may still realize other elements of the Hierarchy.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943)

 On top of the physiological foundation, there is creativity, spontaneity, achievement and respect.   These, and several others, are crucial to the deepening of our humanity.  Deprivation from arts and culture will not starve us, but it will weaken us, as well as the fabric between us.  Without arts and culture, stories cannot be told, rendered relevant or relatable.  From this place, ignorance, repression and intolerance are borne.

It is for this reason that development endeavours like the Centre for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA) holds free drop-in arts programs for young Afghan females between the ages of 15 and 30 in Kabul.  Under the Taliban regime, the arts were largely banned from public life, and women were not permitted to participate in most artistic endeavours.  Now, the CCAA offers free classes in photography, installation, documentary and painting – oil and acrylic – and receives Norwegian funding for their efforts.

Heidi Carrubba, a Canadian working as a Program Advisor for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) in Afghanistan, volunteers every Thursday as a photography instructor at the Centre in Kabul.  Heidi, 29, first learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy in her first year Third World Development course, part of McMaster University’s Arts & Science Programme curriculum.  The programme, combined with an additional major in Peace Studies, instilled in Heidi an awareness of the vast complexities of development, poverty and conflict.

Heidi has since pursued a career in international development, with a particular focus on conflict and gender.  After graduating with a Master of Arts from the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (Ottawa), Heidi worked in Tajikistan and, now, Afghanistan.  Her work with the CCAA reaffirms her commitment to volunteerism and the role of the visual arts in peace- and nation-building.  “It’s difficult to get the girls to let loose with their photography, but once they do, they love it and have so much fun,” says Heidi of the amateur artists, “I try to work with the girls on getting them to stage their photos and their subjects, but this is unnatural for them.  They tend to take pictures of natural settings and scapes, and Kabul scenes.”

In Kabul public schools, there are no cultural or art programs – no drama, music or visual arts.  The public education system is almost 100 percent donor-driven, meaning the priorities of Western donors matter the most when it comes the curriculum development.  In many senses, this is a good thing – it ensures that the curricula are high-quality, and offer the same teaching to boys and girls.  However, it also means that anything considered extraneous to the ‘essentials’ of science, math and languages doesn’t get funded.

Over her December holidays, Heidi returned home to Sarnia, Ontario with 30 paintings and 20 photos from CCAA artists in her suitcase.  The pieces are featured in the Artistic Expressions by Afghan Women Exhibition and Art Sale at the Kenneith Gallery between December 17 – January 7, 2012.  “The paintings are expressive, and more abstract, in the tradition of contemporary painting,” explained Heidi, “The photographs are very intimate.  There is one of a woman breast feeding in her home.  These are not perspectives that foreigners in Afghanistan really get to see or know about.”

Heidi Carrubba and work from Artistic Expressions at the Kennieth Gallery, Sarnia Ontario

Working with the young artists at the CCAA is one of Heidi’s rare changes to meet Afghan women who are not working – the vast majority.  Heidi admits that the CCAA has stirred some controversy both through the images depicted – like women praying – and through the very fact that young women travel, often solo, to a centre where they engage in arts-based learning, including the depiction of women.  The CCAA has been steadfast in its mission, and believes that the opportunity for young women to express themselves – and what they have witnessed – is essential.  “Some of the paintings are sorrowful,” explains Heidi, “it’s a reflection of what they’ve seen and felt”.

And so, is reflecting what has been seen and felt important in Afghanistan?  A country where the other prescient issues – tribal warfare, volatile neighbours, drought, exhausting terrain, resource extraction, poverty, gender-based violence and racism – may have a more visible, direct effect on livelihoods?  Does arts-based healing, for example, have a role to play in a country where an inestimable percentage live with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other anxiety issues, but are consistently re-traumatized by living wars?

The debate about Aid will rage on, but we can all agree that if we’re going to keep playing the aid game – and countries are still going to keep accepting aid from rich countries and inter-governmental organizations like the United Nations – then making aid match the context is important.   The context is found in the anthropology of a place – a science that relies on narrative, networks and, yes, arts and culture.  If our aid financiers and economists reached deep into their left brain for anthropological perspectives – or even just went sometimes to the countries they prescribe for – we’d save on wasted aid, and find the funding for arts in school.  We’d have found the resources to support the expression of young minds in Afghanistan, or any place were hidden voices bear crucial insight into our world’s most serious malaise.

* Heidi was also interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) about the exhibit here *