Mud houses as a tool for change: Brown Gold at WOW Festival Nepal
Gulariya, Nepal, was declared Open Defection Free (ODF) in 2015, 95% of households use toilets. But new sanitation challenges have emerged. Research from the Brown Gold project shows that 80% of the sanitation system is emptied by hand, and waste is contaminating groundwater because of uncovered drains and poorly lined pit latrines. This is a serious public health crisis.
Solutions are needed to create safe sanitation systems now. But this waste does provide an opportunity for communities — it can be re-used.
The Brown Gold project is creating an interactive art installation to through a group mud-houses, to facilitate dialogue and education around better sanitation practices and repurposing ‘shit’ as ‘brown gold’. The houses will be located at Lumbini Peace Park, Nepal, with the first one opening for the Women of the World (WOW) Festival on 16 April 2022, and will be open for more than a year.
Art as a tool for change
Art and performance are often used in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) research. It’s seen as a way of clearly communicating sensitive issues and the challenges people face, whilst promoting positive messaging and catalysing change. But the majority of art in WASH projects tend to have a focus on personal hygiene. Brown Gold is taking this a step further. We want to change attitudes towards ‘shit’ — showing it’s value as a resource — and towards sanitation work itself.
The art project is supported by a local researcher, visiting Nepalese artists and inclusive artist Alice Fox. Together, we will lead conversations with local people, students and policy makers who will also interact with the installations. Each house will include:
- Learning materials on the importance of good sanitation infrastructure, pit latrines and examples of products that can be re-used.
- Photo-voice, film and work by artists from marginalised communities and castes representing the experiences of Dalit sanitation workers. They will seek to increase respect for this profession, challenging the discrimination they face, and identifying the important work they do.
- A ‘dialogue for change’ installation that will evolve with the programme over the year and will include art installations on sanitation and ‘brown gold’.
Sanitation workers and Brown Gold project colleagues will perform a procession at the WOW Festival to raise awareness of their work and the mud house installations.
‘Our performance will be developed through a series of creative workshops with eight sanitation workers and their families. It is designed to draw attention to caste-based discrimination that Dalit workers perpetually face in the sanitation sector and the ill-health they and their families suffer as a result of poor working conditions’ Ashmina Ranjit (artist-activist working with Alice Fox)
Why this is needed now
One of our research sites is in Nepal — led by Prabha Pokhrel at the Integrated Development Society Nepal. We are working in Gulariya, a rapidly urbanising area in the west of Nepal and around 550 kilometres from the capital Kathmandu.
‘In the community, people think that now we are ODF, we don’t need to worry about sanitation anymore. The workshop, education programme and performance at Lumbini are important because we will be raising awareness of the need to focus on second generation sanitation issues’ Prabha Pokhrel, Integrated Development Society Nepal
Sanitation workers in Gulariya are mostly from very poor families and castes that are stigmatised and discriminated against. There is a lack of basic safety equipment, so they are forced to work without any protection at all — exposing them to serious health risks.
The team have found that although some waste is re-used via BioGas, ideas and methods for turning ‘shit’ into ‘brown gold’ are largely rejected by communities and authorities.
Brown Gold’s art installation will work with communities and policy makers to change their attitude towards waste and sanitation workers.
All photos have been shared with the permission of the photographer. They remain the copyright of the photographer.
