Wayfinding in arts-based methods: Navigating home, belonging, and the future with children born of conflict-related sexual violence in northern Uganda

In this article, we explore the wartime and post-war lives of a unique group of internally displaced children—those who were born in Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) captivity in northern Uganda. We draw upon in-depth interviews and individual and collective art-making activities with 79 children born of conflict-related sexual violence in three districts in northern Uganda. Using the concept of “wayfinding,” we highlight children’s perspectives and experiences in relation to home, belonging, and future-making. In particular, we examine the role of imagination and the co-emergence of shared terrains of meaning in the creation of a community of experience in these children’s lives, as well as how children worked both individually and collectively to actively (re)build and (re)envision their past, present and their futures. We argue that for children born in LRA captivity, establishing control over their memories and experiences, individually and with others, enables a form of individual and collective wayfinding through social exclusion that contributes to agentive future making.