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Notes from the Project Manager
January 2021
Dear friends of Brandeis’s Peacebuilding and the Arts Program and IMPACT global initiative,
I am honored to welcome the readers of this issue of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now in the role of IMPACT project manager.
The previous year was marked with global health crises turning the “normal” life of humanity upside down. The effect of global challenges -- polarization, racial injustice, violent conflicts, displacement, the rise of authoritarianism, to name a few -- on people’s lives in various parts of the world became even more severe when coupled with a pandemic.
While we as a global community are grappling with the negative effects of some or most of these hardships in our families, communities, regions and countries, and hoping for a healthier, more peaceful and more stable year, 2021 seems to come to “compete” with its “predecessor”. The recent insurrection at the US Capitol, followed by expressions of worry by authoritarian world leaders about democracy in the United States, and their call for a peaceful transition of power, feel like a scene from a surreal movie.
Seeing the immense amount of work by multiple groups, individuals and organizations across the globe who are striving to address some of these challenges in creative ways, fills me with hope that we as a global community can search for and find new meanings at the points where we feel lost, reimagine and revisit the traditional understandings of the world order and build a more just society.
More than ever, the work of artists and cultural practitioners, and others who engage in the ecosystem of arts, culture and conflict transformation in various roles, seems vital to positioning ourselves to support each other in creating a better future for all.
This issue of the e-newsletter starts with an introductory section where artists and scholars share their reflections on possibilities for 2021. Shokoufeh Sakhi in her meditative piece on creative possibilities for the future, explores what the normal we imagine as a society might look like. Playwright Erik Ehn shares his thoughts on “revolution and the day to day breakdown, break-through, spilling forth and soaking in of it.” His poem, Pray Without Ceasing, follows his short essay. Emilie Diouf, IMPACT Leadership Circle Member, suggests a “Sankofa-inspired way of looking, which will open up new avenues for inclusive paradigms to redefine our humanness for a more peaceful and equitable world.”
The current issue marks the premiere of a specific section within the e-newsletter focusing on news about IMPACT (Imagining Together Platform for Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation) and contributions from its Leadership Circle members. With ongoing lockdown and restrictions still at place, IMPACT continues to engage with virtual initiatives and events on global and regional scales. Germaine Ingram, IMPACT Leadership Circle member, reflects on other IMPACT members’ contributions to a UNESCO Art-Lab event, The imperative of cultural justice: Arts for inclusion, equity and human rights on the occasion of Human Rights Day on December 10, 2020. Toni Shapiro-Phim spoke with Dijana Milosevic, co-founder and artistic director of DAH Theatre and IMPACT Leadership Center member about the DAH Theatre Arts and Human Rights Festival held in October 2020. Ellada Evangelou, artistic director of the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival and IMPACT Leadership Circle member, reflects on the Thinking Partners initiative - an innovative model of cooperation between Buffer Fringe Festival and IMPACT that was launched in the spring of 2020. In her piece, Ellada highlights the perspective of artists and “thinking partners” involved in the Festival.
The IMPACT section also includes news from the Philippines: In October 2020, Mindanao Peace Institute (MPI) invited IMPACT to plan and lead a session on assessment of arts-based peacebuilding practice within MPI’s Arts Building Peace: Creative Approaches in Conflict Transformation online course. MPI’s Rhea Silvosa writes about Lee Perlman’s and Shahid Nadeem’s involvement and the collaboration between IMPACT and MPI. And we round out that section of the newsletter with an exploration of the importance of ethical worldviewing in work across different cultures, written by Polly Walker, IMPACT Leadership Circle member.
Finally, for an example of excellent practice on-the-ground, learn about the arts and conflict transformation approach that Lakhon Komnit, a community-based theatre organization in Cambodia’s Battambang Province, takes.
As always, our Upcoming Events and Resources and Announcements sections offer lots of news worth checking out: publication of new books, including Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World and Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence; funding opportunities; competitions and much more.
I want to conclude by inviting you to listen to the recent song of Collectif Medz Bazar Stand | Votki |Ayaklan (in Armenian, Turkish, Persian, English and French), calling for peace [in Nagorno-Karabakh] and the whole world.
Stay in peace and thank you for your commitment and work in the field of arts, culture, and conflict transformation and beyond.
Warmly,
Armine Avetisyan
IMPACT Project Manager
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Artistic Reflections on the Possibilities of 2021
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 | Portrait of Saint Augustine of Hippo receiving the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century
Source: Wikimedia Commons
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Pray Without Ceasing 1/1/21
By Erik Ehn, playwright
Editorial Advisor, Acting Together
I write from Albuquerque, the homeland of the Sandia Pueblo and the Navaho Nation. Some thoughts about revolution and the day to day breakdown, break-through, spilling forth and soaking in of it.
First, the stumbles I make when using the word.
Revolution isn’t an event, a translation, or specific consequence.
Ambition sometimes leads me to imagine that revolution is one day accomplished.
And I test revolution against the idea of the “new.”
My witness to and awe of deeper revolutions leads me to suspect that revolution is instead an approach, a form of research, and a path of permissions – a way of being, not being-there, but enjoying and suffering in balance the embrace of an ongoing responsibility to a relationship (to the relationship in one’s life; to relatedness). The way is apocalyptic: a revelation of true nature. The way as a way is always wayfaring; it is, before and after anything; it can never be new because it always was. Our birthright and legacy are the heart of our hearts’ desire.
An outcome, like a regime change, or new law, can motivate and mark revolution, but these differences aren’t enough. The end of slavery wasn’t enough, the voting rights act isn’t enough. The revolution is in Black Lives Matter, really moving ahead like this.
This intentional journey, unbalancing forward to a specific goal whose meaning is poetically expansive and whose attainment is mooted by the quality of the going – is pilgrimage.
Read the full article and the poem.
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 | New Delihi’s India Gate war memorial on 17 October 2019 and on 8 April 2020. Photograph: Anushree Fadnavis/Adnan Abidi/Reuters, Source: The Guardian
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| What normal do we want this time? Some meditations on the creative possibilities for change
By Shokoufeh Sakhi, Ph.D.
Imagining Together/Acting Together Learning Exchange participant and summary team member
The happy new year did not easily roll off our tongues this year. People said good riddance to the old one, but that did not say it all either. We passed from one year to another like no other that most can remember.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, globalization reached new territories. Global awareness of our vulnerability, the closeness of death, the lameness of our protective defenses, both biologically and scientifically. Politically, socially and culturally however we showed signs of resilience, though not at the same level in all three plains. If in the year 2020, the “normal” died, 2021 began with a hope for its revival.
But hope is a tricky one.
As the spiral of vulnerability and political chaos swirls, news and political statements pivot around vaccination and a hope to return to “normal.” Heads of states act and speak as the bearers of the gift of deliverance, and the populace tired and anxious long for the return of “normal.” Normal, however, is that which does not return. With each crisis we create a new one. What normal do we want this time?
Read the full article.
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 | Source: Berea College,
Carter G. Woodson Center
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| Looking Back to Move Forward Collectively
By Emilie Diouf, IMPACT Leadership Circle
To ground artistic reflections on possibilities for 2021, I’d like to conjure the image of the Sankofa bird, an element of the Adinkra system emanating from the Akan people of Ghana and Ivory Coast. The Sankofa image is a communicator in the Adinkra system, often represented as a mythical bird with its feet firmly planted forward and its head turned backwards. The Sankofa bird signifies a philosophical approach to the past as a rearview mirror for understanding our present while we move into the future. Its multifarious diasporic meanings revolve around the principle that wisdom in learning from the past ensures a strong future.
In the midst of devastating challenges of the global Covid-19 pandemic, political discord, and the ongoing fight against systemic racism and oppression, a meditation on the relation between past, present, and future is not futile. While still mourning the terrible losses of the Covid-19 pandemic and grappling with disquieting global inequities, we are compelled to examine our humanity in all its temporalities. Responding to a year of individual and collective critical evaluation of time, space, and movement in the stillness of quarantine, artists from different corners of the globe have been instrumental in challenging us to rethink universal humanity, particularly in relation to systemic structures of power such as race, ethnicity, gender, sex, class, age, ability, religion, and caste. Their creative ability to articulate the desperation, anguish, and sometimes, shame, of the present moment, but also possibilities to reinvent ourselves have imbued us with hope. These artistic voices pierce through the wall of the pandemic to confront us with an obvious yet discarded question: how do we explain situations in which some forms of suffering are recognized only to be compounded, while other forms of suffering remain invisible? They open up possibilities for co-creating new vocabularies of empathy that draw from our shortcomings to conceptualize and help us feel compassion toward one another.
I would like to end by referring once again to the image of the Sankofa bird. As we are at the threshold of a new year, I would like to invite everyone to adopt the stance of the Sankofa bird, even if for a moment, to gaze back below the surface of our past experiences; to shift this gaze into the present for a creative reclaiming of our ability to resist and persist in the midst of the challenges that surround each of us. I hope that this Sankofa-inspired way of looking will open up new avenues for inclusive paradigms to redefine our humanness for a more peaceful and equitable world. I remain inspired by young artists like singer Lady Mounass and painter Di’art Rietou, both of Senegal, who, through their works, contemplate and grapple with the daily lives of Senegalese women survivors of rape and domestic violence. Through their creativity, I perceive aesthetics and ethics of care encapsulated by their devotion to reinventing themselves and moving their communities one step closer to social transformation.
Dewenati!!! (a Wolof word that means “may we live to celebrate it next year”)
May 2021 be artistically regenerative.
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UNESCO Art Lab: The imperative of cultural justice: Arts for inclusion, equity and human rights
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 | Toni Shapiro-Phim and Fatu Gayflor at the virtual event,
Photo courtesy: UNESCO Art Lab
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by Germaine Ingram, IMPACT Leadership Circle
New Year’s Eve, 2020. As treasured New Year’s traditions were unavoidably stifled, and historic locations of spiritual ritual for the new year were temporarily shuttered by the global COVID pandemic, political and military forces were intentionally destroying sites of cultural heritage and uprooting heritage traditions in places around the world. One immediate example of assaults on and threats to physical and performative cultural heritage is the recent attacks by the Azerbaijan military on Armenian heritage sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, a community in Azerbaijan that was controlled by ethnic Armenians since 1994 until a Russian-brokered cease-fire, following 6 weeks of armed conflict over the territory, transferred disputed land—-and the Armenian heritage sites within it——to Azerbaijan. As a recent Smithsonian Magazine article notes, “Heritage once again finds itself in the crosshairs of conflict.” It’s a crosshairs that not only targets the irreplaceable past embodied in the physical presence of historic heritage sites, but also endangers the present and future of which those sites are hubs of identity and meaning. The same Smithsonian article states: “These sites…are integrally tied into present realities. They are spaces where people create and affirm their identities, meet with friends and family, or even make their livings…. Many heritage sites are not inert buildings that are purely vessels of history but are also living and breathing entities that are very much situated in the daily lives of those that live around them.”
It is situations like that of Nagorno-Karabakh that provided a present, urgent backdrop for UNESCO’s observance of Human Rights Day on December 10, 2020, with a live-streamed presentation titled, “The imperative of cultural justice: Arts for inclusion, equity and human rights” presented by its Art-Lab for Human Rights and Dialogue. The Art-Lab was launched in 2018 with the aim of “mainstream[ing] the arts across humanitarian and development programmes…[and] target[ing] cultural operators, policymakers and humanitarian actors to involve the most vulnerable in arts practice, for the advancement of human rights and dignity.” In early 2020, the Art-Lab Platform emerged from a gathering of practitioners, cultural operators, artists, experts in human rights, cultural rights and intercultural dialogue, and humanitarian workers. The workplan this cross-disciplinary group adopted had three pillars: “1) raising awareness in UN agencies and other stakeholders on the transformative power of art and culture in humanitarian work: 2) consolidating the Art-Lab Platform in facilitating exchanges between cultural and humanitarian workers, artists and researchers; and 3) strengthening research and capacity-building, alongside the pilot-testing of tools in the field.” In anticipation of activating these three pillars, the Art-Lab Platform undertook a six-month process of reviewing existing documents and reaching a set of recommendations to ground their future work. The December 10th virtual presentation marked the culmination of their study and release of recommendations and proposals for next steps in scaling up the use of artistic practice for social inclusion and the realization of human rights and dignity.
Read the full article and watch passages from the online event.
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DAH Theatre's Arts and Human Rights Festival
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 | From the DAH Theatre performance of “For Your own Good,” featuring Ljubica Damčević, Evgenia Eškina Kovačevic, Ivana Milenović Popović, and Ivana Milovanović.
Photo by: Una Škandro
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Belgrade, Serbia-based DAH Theatre is a professional performance troupe and research center. With origins in the early 1990s – formed by Jadranka Anđelić and Dijana Milošević as a response to the Serbian government’s acts of aggression -- DAH works at the crossroads of theatre, dance, and the visual arts, creating daring artistic forms that inspire personal and social transformation. DAH has performed on almost every continent and trained hundreds of performers from across the world in its DAH Theatre Institute.
In October of 2020, DAH produced and hosted the country’s first-ever Arts and Human Rights Festival, conceived of as a platform for ideas and aesthetic approaches that highlight and connect art and human rights.The co-Artistic Directors of the Festival were Ivana Milenović Popović and Dijana Milošević. The program included performances, films, installations, workshops and conversations between artists, activists and broader audiences. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, initial plans for an international in-person event in June were re-worked so that DAH could, instead, hold a hybrid Festival later in the year, with a limited number of programs in person (following strict public health protocols), and many others online.
DAH Co-founder and artistic director Dijana Milošević, in reflecting on this Festival, shares that DAH had previous experience in producing festivals, for their anniversaries and other occasions. But, considering “our turbulent world, what would we want to celebrate? To what do we want to call attention? Human Rights! We are doing theater that is working in the field of human rights. We’d met with many artists in theater and beyond who were doing the same. Some were conscious of working in the field of human rights, and some were not. When we look to our specific society in Serbia, not only are human rights abused – we don’t even have a culture of human rights. The concept of human rights is blurred in people’s minds.” Another goal was “to make human rights no longer understood as something imposed from the outside.” As one step in sparking and nurturing a culture of human rights, meaning that people understand these rights, and understand them as their own, and also take non-violent actions to realize them, the Arts and Human Rights Festival came into being.
Read the full article.
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Arts Building Peace: An Online Class's Conversation on Measuring Arts-Based Peacebuilding
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 | Participants and instructors at the online course.
Photo courtesy: MPI
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By Rhea Silvosa
Peacebuilding Programs Coordinator at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute
“Art practices have their own uniqueness that evaluating them becomes a dilemma.”
“A lot of convincing needs to happen when we are thinking of doing evaluation and assessment in engaging arts and peacebuilding…convincing a different range of stakeholders who may have different ways and language of getting convinced, which makes it [evaluation and assessment] difficult.”
“It [evaluation and assessment] is important for planning purposes and learning the needs of the community.”
These were just some of the responses from the participants of the Arts Building Peace online class in what was an engaging, thought-provoking conversation on the value of evaluation and assessment in arts-based peacebuilding. It was the sixth week of a 10-week online course on Arts Building Peace: Creative Approaches in Conflict Transformation facilitated by Babu Ayindo from Kenya and Kyoko Okumoto from Japan. This course was one of the four virtual peacebuilding courses that the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) organized and implemented in the last quarter of 2020, and one of the first online classes offered by MPI in its 20-year existence as a peacebuilding institute.
Until 2020, MPI had always provided in-person training, with the training taking place in Davao City, Philippines. However, as in-person training and face-to-face interactions were made impossible because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Annual Peacebuilding Training scheduled in May of that year was canceled. MPI was challenged to step outside of its comfort zone and try alternative ways of connecting to sustain its mission of being a resource to peacebuilders around the world. Thankfully, MPI has a network of supporters and believers enabling it to make the transition from doing in-person training to providing remote capacity-building.
And so, from the 25th of September until the 27th of November 2020, 12 participants from the Philippines and one person from India met every Friday for three hours, learning, exploring, and sharing stories and experiences about arts approaches to building peace. As indicated in its course description, Arts Building Peace: Creative Approaches in Conflict Transformation is “built from experiences and lessons of offering the Arts Approaches to Community-Based Peacebuilding course at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute over the last two decades.” This course was not only a product of constant refinement, learning and growth from MPI’s two facilitators, Babu and Kyoko, who are both artists and peace practitioners in their own right, but also a testament of MPI’s belief in the transformative and generative power of the arts in bringing about positive change and disrupting cycles of violence.
This is a belief that is shared and nurtured by IMPACT, a global community of groups and individuals who believe in the power and practice of the arts in transforming violent society to be more peaceful. One of IMPACT’s goals is to encourage the emergence of an infrastructure that can support and sustain this community and the work that it does.
Read the full article.
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The Thinking Partners Program: Reflecting on a Practice
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 | Participants of the virtual discussion ‘The New Faces of Displacement - Artistic Praxis and a Contested Festival in the Middle of a Pandemic’ Photo Courtesy: Buffer Fringe
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A Collaboration between IMPACT and the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2020
By Ellada Evangelou, IMPACT Leadership Circle
Thinking Partner and IMPACT Leadership Circle member Carmen Olaechea writes about the Thinking Partners program as being a ripe possibility that we hadn't harnessed before -- a structure through which artists, academics and intellectuals, individuals with an interest in interdisciplinary conversations and practices, mix and engage, being open to speaking and reflecting with each other. A description of that ripe possibility, how we at the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival grabbed onto it, and developed something new, follows.
The godmother of the programme, IMPACT Leadership Circle member Germaine Ingram, had indeed offered the idea as part of a discussion where I was contemplating again about the (inevitably) insular nature of a festival taking place in the buffer zone, the in-between place of an island torn in two halves, with an already conflicting European-Middle Eastern identity, not to mention a post-conflict condition that has created an added wall of separation between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
And there it was, the opportunity for dialogue, the creation of a new platform for artists and thinking buddies, thinking partners, to speak, to exchange, to help. Connecting artists and individuals whose profiles are a good match or whose skills and experience in certain fields may be of need to the artists and their teams developing work for the Festival. The Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation (acct) ecosystem also became a learning platform for artists, who may not have been aware of what it means to present in a festival with ‘buffer zone’ in its name.
So seamlessly energizing this mechanism of de-colonizing the Festival, creating these possibilities that open new awareness in arts practitioners, became one of the most organically generated pools of new thought generated in its duration.
Read the full article article.
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Ethical Worldviewing: engaging respectfully and justly with different social worlds
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Source: Pinterest post by Ingrid Miera
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By Polly Walker,
IMPACT Leadership Circle
Research and practice in the field of arts, culture and conflict transformation (acct) requires ethical worldviewing, engaging respectfully and justly across different worldviews.
According to Jayne Docherty (2001), a worldview may be defined as a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world, especially from a specific standpoint. Docherty goes on to explain that in order to understand any worldview, one needs to understand how the person or group immersed in the worldview responds to the following questions:
Ontology: What is real or true?
Logic: How is ‘the real’ organized?
Axiology: What is valuable or important?
Epistemology: How do we know about what is?
Ethic: How should I or we act? (p. 51)
Worldviewing is complex, in part because “most worldview interactions are unconscious negotiations over reality’’ (Docherty, 2001, p. 53). Most aspects of worldview reside in the out-of-awareness aspect of our being, and often do not surface into conscious awareness until one is placed in situations with others who hold worldviews that may be starkly different from one’s own, possibly sparking conflicts over ethics, epistemology, or other aspects of worldview. Many people consider that actions arising out of their worldview are ‘best practice’ rather than their worldview being a particular constellation of ways of engaging with and understanding the world around them.
In a great deal of peacebuilding research and practice, dominant worldviews of the global north have gained hegemony, marginalizing other worldviews. Engaging with the local through postliberal peacebuilding has become a central aspect of international peacebuilding in many respects (Helsing, 2021). Nevertheless, a deeper engagement with the worldviews of many needs to be undertaken to transform structural and cultural violence in meaningful and sustainable ways.
Read the full article.
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Theatre and Peacebuilding in Northwestern Cambodia
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 | Performance of "Lucky Fish" in Sraskeov Village, Battambang Province, Cambodia (2019), devised by a group of 12 women as part of Lakhon Komnit's Theatre for Empowerment project, supported by Voice Global. Photo courtesy: Lakhon Komnit Organization.
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Lakhon Komnit Organization, based in Cambodia’s Battambang Province, has a new video introducing their approach to arts and conflict transformation. One of their initiatives involves production of a “Forum Theatre” project with women who have survived or are experiencing intimate partner violence, or who have been discriminated against because of their gender or gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or age. The women themselves perform their own stories for their local community, with community members helping to shift the endings in ways that lead to a consideration and articulation of alternatives in situations of conflict. Another example of their work concerns men incarcerated for drug use and/or addiction. Through theatrical exercises, participants build trust among themselves and practice ways to interact in their old social circles – where the pressure to use drugs is perhaps great – to avoid repeating destructive and dangerous behavior. Lakhon Komnit Organization’s co-founders, Nov Sreyleab and Chhit Chanphireak, have designed and facilitated projects, workshops and performances with communities, NGOs, schools and universities across Cambodia, and performed internationally.
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Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice Conversation Series
September 2020-February 2021
Brandeis University's Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts and IMPACT in partnership with Acts of Listening Lab, and Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University invite you to explore the contributions of arts, oral history, and culture to communities and societies in transition, based on the March 2020 special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice. Join us to discuss implications of examples from many regions of the globe for transitional justice processes and possibilities.
See the flyer for details.
Stay tuned for the next conversation: Symbolic Reparations: Ethical Considerations, on Thursday, February 18!
Ubumuntu Festival
July 16-18, 2021
Ubumuntu Festival’s team is excited to announce that online applications for next year's Ubumuntu Festival in July 2021, which is themed Rebirth; I can, I must, I will, will open soon.
If you're an artist and want to participate in the 2021 festival, be sure to follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and check out the website for more information on how to apply.
28th Edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest
June 4-13, 2021
“International documentary filmmakers may apply now for the UK's Sheffield Doc/Fest’s MeetMarket (market and pitch forum) and
Arts Talent Market (fostering new, interdisciplinary digital projects). Please note that Sheffield Doc/Fest requires applicants to submit a small fee for each application.”
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Resources and Announcements
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 | Photo courtesy:
The University of Michigan Press
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Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence (New Book)
Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence demonstrates how imagination, empathy and resilience contribute to the processes of social repair after ethnic and political violence. Adding to the literature on transitional justice, peacebuilding, and the anthropology of violence and social repair, the authors show how these conceptual pathways— imagination, empathy and resilience—enhance recovery, coexistence, and sustainable peace. Some of the chapters focus explicitly on the arts, ritual and women’s narratives. Coexistence (or reconciliation) is the underlying goal or condition desired after mass violence, enabling survivors to move forward with their lives. Imagination allows these survivors (victims, perpetrators, bystanders) to draw guidance and inspiration from their social and cultural imaginaries, to develop empathy, and to envision a future of peace and coexistence. Resilience emerges through periods of violence and its aftermaths through acts of survival, compassion, modes of rebuilding social worlds, and the establishment of a peaceful society. Focusing on society at the grass roots level, the authors discuss the myriad and little-understood processes of social repair that allow ruptured societies and communities to move toward a peaceful and stable future. The volume also illustrates some of the ways in which imagination, empathy, and resilience may contribute to the prevention of future violence. The authors conclude with a number of practical and policy recommendations. The cases include examples from Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Colombia, the Southern Cone, Iraq, and Bosnia. Edited by Eve M. Zucker, Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University (USA) and Laura McGrew, practitioner and researcher who completed her PhD in peace studies at Coventry University (UK).
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Call for Papers: Genocide Studies and Prevention (journal)
Apply by March 1, 2021!
The journal editors invite manuscripts on the intersections of the environment and collective violence for a special issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention, Environmental Degradation, Climate Change, and Mass Violence. Click on the PDF above for details of the call for papers, and information about submissions, due by March 1st.
Postcolonial Cultural Management (New Article)
Arts Management Quarterly
“Coloniality - or colonial thinking - is still prevalent in most parts of the world and most aspects of life, even in arts and culture. Professionals in the sector may not think of themselves as biased, but postcolonial studies prove them wrong. This issue of Arts Management Quarterly presents first approaches to decolonize arts and cultural management.”
Music and Arts in Action: Vol. 7 No. 3 (2020): Special Issue: Keywords for Music in Peacebuilding, Volume 2
Music and Arts in Action (MAiA)
“We are extremely happy to include in this volume experts and/or activists from music sociology, inclusive education, peace studies, transformative leadership, ethnomusicology, community music, spirituality and post-war reconstruction. The keywords found in this volume cover debates about identity and peacebuilding, notions of space, inclusion, sound communities and transitional justice.”
The most important milestones of Crear Vale La Pena in Argentina
“Explore the most significant achievements of a very special 2020 in Crear Vale La Pena, Argentina. Creative activities migrated 100% to virtuality!
We carried out workshops for head teachers, teachers, students, artists, health workers, social workers, community leaders, private companies. We reached 5560 young people and adults and through our teachers training program to more than 20,000 beneficiaries with our creative-playful didactic approach! We exhibited in 19 national and international conferences.”
Collaborating in Fragile Contexts and Processes of Peacebuilding Degree Program
Arts And International Cooperation
The CAS Arts and International Cooperation in partnership with artasfoundation brings together artists and members of internationally cooperating organizations from the Global South and North. What they share is an interest in the potential of the arts to support processes of social transformations and peacebuilding and an engagement for fair and sensitive international collaboration. Through a study-trip with field visits, they gain insight into actual art projects in fragile contexts and reflect upon them on the basis of tools and concepts from current literature. They conclude with a mentored diploma thesis that relates to an individual project or work-context. Please consult the course website for all dates and more precise information: CAS Arts and International Cooperation | ZHdK.ch
Opportunities in January and February 2021
Hyperallergic
From residencies and fellowships to open calls for art and writing, a list of opportunities for which artists, writers, and art workers can apply in January and February.
Open Call – MASARAT: Grants for artists and cultural initiatives
British Council
Apply by February 7, 2021!
“The Masarat Grants programme seeks to respond to the needs of artists and cultural practitioners in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, providing financial support to enable continued production and project work in very difficult circumstances.”
The Fund for Diversity in Film Scoring
Accepting applications on a rolling basis
“Reel Change: The Fund for Diversity in Film Scoring is a five-year grant and mentorship program for film composers of diverse ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and abilities that are historically underrepresented in film composition. The fund assists US-based projects currently in production/post-production where additional support and/or mentoring would be beneficial to film composers who are at a pivotal point in their career in which the project will help them break through to the next stage of their profession.”
2021 VSA International Young Soloists Competition
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Deadline: March 2, 2021!
“Each year outstanding young musicians with disabilities from around the world receive the VSA International Young Soloists Award, $2,000, and the opportunity to perform and participate in professional development and music coaching activities provided by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. This program is open to soloists and ensembles of any instrument or genre!”
Dance Across America | Inauguration Celebration 2021
For Sama (full film)
FRONTLINE PBS
“In a time of conflict and darkness in her home in Aleppo, Syria, one young woman kept her camera rolling — while falling in love, getting married, having a baby and saying goodbye as her city crumbled. The award-winning documentary unfolds as a love letter from filmmaker and young mother Waad al-Kateab to her daughter — Sama.”
Stand | Votki | Ayaklan | Debout
Collectif Medz Bazar
A new song (in Armenian, Turkish, Persian English and French) from Collectif Medz Bazar calling for peace following the recent 44-day war in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
COVID Fears Find Expression in Embroidery
The Advocacy Project
Girls from Nepal, Zimbabwe and the US express their fears through stitching.
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Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice Conversation Series
September 2020-February 2021
Join us to explore the contributions of arts, oral history, and culture to communities and societies in transition. Discuss implications of examples from many regions for transitional justice processes and possibilities.
Stay tuned for the next conversation: Symbolic Reparations: Ethical Considerations,
on Thursday, February 18!
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Open Call – MASARAT: Grants for artists and cultural initiatives
British Council
Apply by February 7, 2021!
“The Masarat Grants programme seeks to respond to the needs of artists and cultural practitioners in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, providing financial support to enable continued production and project work in very difficult circumstances.”
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Opportunities in January and
February 2021
Hyperallergic
From residencies and fellowships to open calls for art and writing, a list of opportunities for which artists, writers, and art workers can apply in
January and February.
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Open Call – MASARAT: Grants for artists and cultural initiativesBritish Council
Apply by February 7, 2021!
“The Masarat Grants programme seeks to respond to the needs of artists and cultural practitioners in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, providing financial support to enable continued production and project work in very difficult circumstances.”
Opportunities in January and February 2021Hyperallergic
From residencies and fellowships to open calls for art and writing, a list of opportunities for which artists, writers, and art workers can apply in January and February.
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Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life
Brandeis University
415 South Street | MS 086 | Waltham, MA 02454-9110
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