 |
|
Welcome
June 2026
Dear Friends of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now,
June 2026 opened with the annual awarding of the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent. Presented by the Human Rights Foundation, the prize celebrates “those who unmask the lie of dictatorship through art.” This year’s awardees, announced at the Oslo Freedom Forum, are artists Sai [last name redacted], in exile from Myanmar, and Gao Zhao, born and raised in China. Gao Zhao, who remains in detention in China, was arrested there almost two years ago because of satirical sculptures he had made between 2005 and 2009. Sai is an artist and curator who collaborates with dissident artists the world over; he is also co-founder of the Myanmar Peace Museum, through which he highlights creative acts of protest and resistance directed against Myanmar’s military rulers.
We open our newsletter with reference to this prize and these artists in recognition of the global rise of authoritarianism, the suffering that it engenders, and the potency of imaginative endeavors to address and counter tyranny as well as attendant oppressions such as homophobia, anti-migrant attitudes and policy, and racism.
This edition of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now places the spotlight on individuals searching for safety, affirming dignity, and, indeed, building community – through the arts – as they seek asylum in precarious circumstances in Sweden, after having made often-perilous journeys from circumstances of violence or oppression in their homelands. Dr. Axel Winget writes about fostering, with others, “a healing-centered, creative, community-based space where queer and trans refugees could explore and share their stories on their own terms, through metaphor, embodiment, ritual, and collective witnessing.”
We also situate, center stage, the vision and innovation of one particular artist in South Africa as she and her neighbors face the historical injustices of Apartheid, and their enduring legacy. Dr. Emilie Diouf amplifies poet and playwright Refilwe Pieterse’s efforts in human and community development that include, in Pieterse’s South African township, the growth of an alternative approach to protest theater that pays heed “to the psychological well-being of the artists involved in the process.”
The stories, events, opportunities, and resources that we share in this issue traverse continents and disciplines. We hope that you find this material informative as it hints at the breadth of current approaches to the defiance of autocracy, and to the pursuit of conflict transformation and social justice in local and global contexts. We hope, too, that the contents are inspiring, as you chart your own path.
Thank you for joining us in reflection and action.
Toni Shapiro-Phim, Director
Armine Avetisyan, Program Manager
Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
| |
|  |
Newcomers Performing Arts member Tonny at his first Pride in Stockholm, 2019. Photo courtesy of Axel Winget
|
|
Project Spotlight
Healing Crossings in a Time of Deportation
By Axel Winget, PhD, MFA, RDT. Axel is a queer, transmasculine drama therapist, educator, and performance-maker based in Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi, and the founder of Queer Healing Space.
Crossing for Love + Learning Access
I crossed an ocean not for refuge, but for love, lineage, and a longing for belonging. In the people I would later meet through RFSL Newcomers, I recognized a different but resonant longing: for a life where one could breathe more freely, love more truthfully, and be less alone. I arrived in Sweden already committed to performance as a site of healing, survival, and collective transformation. But Sweden changed the stakes of that commitment. In relationship with queer and trans asylum seekers and refugees, I came to understand more deeply how survival itself is structured by access: access to safety, care, movement, language, recognition, and rest.
One of the first things I learned in Stockholm was how much access was organized through small systems that most Swedes had the privilege to barely notice. To ride the metro, you needed an ACCESS card. To enter many buildings, you needed an electronic fob. To navigate public systems, apply for jobs, or open a bank account, you often needed a Swedish personal number. For those granted entry into the national imaginary, these systems were mundane conveniences. For asylum seekers, they could become daily reminders of exclusion and even threats to survival.
I kept thinking about that word: access.
| |
|  |
Picture of Refilwe Pieterse, taken during unrest in South Africa. Photo by Lutwana Media
|
|
Artist Spotlight: Refilwe Pieterse
We Sang and Molded Hope into a Melody
By Emilie Diouf, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of English; Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; African and African American Studies; and Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation, Brandeis University
“Our songs were hope molded into melody. Song was our greeting, a melody that carried warmth before words ever arrived. Silence was our companion; it was not a cage. We spoke only when our words carried weight and could plant seeds of meaning in the hearts of others. Today, as our paths cross, even momentarily through this text, I welcome you in that same spirit. May this moment be more than a meeting, may it be a chorus of wisdom, laughter, and purpose. Let us walk softly, speak with deep care, and honor one another through the possibility offered by this moment of connection.” Refilwe Pieterse, in conversation with Emilie N. Diouf
The Role of Art, Culture, Community in Reparative Quest
In the new wave of the decolonization movement in South Africa, the most internationally known being the 2015-2016 #FeesMustFall student protest, and more recently, #CorruptionExposed, or #MyHandsAreClean, so much ink has been spilled about the contemporary valences of Indigenous approaches to justice and conflict transformation. While this line of inquiry is not new to South Africa and the African continent at large, my conversation with Refilwe Pieterse highlights that in the context of post-Apartheid commemorative events such as National Youth Day, observed on June 16, a national day of remembrance of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising, a political discourse of indigeneity often removes the cultural significance of such approaches by reducing them to mere performative speech acts that deviate from addressing the systemic structures that continue to sustain the material legacies of Apartheid and thereby contribute to re-traumatizing Black South Africans.
I spoke with Refilwe Pieterse a few days before the 50th anniversary of the June 16, 2026, Soweto uprising amidst the latest onslaught of anti-African xenophobia and immigration enforcement operations in Alex Township, Pieterse’s home and place of birth, where she runs the Refilwe Pieterse Foundation, a community non-profit organization that works with youth to provide a space for nurturing their talents. During our conversation, Pieterse emphasized that she was not telling her story to traumatize the readers, but to show the urgency of curating spaces of dialogue that allow people to discuss their pain and to preserve their memories. In this long journey toward the work of reckoning with the injustices of Apartheid and their enduring legacy, she also discussed her work in human and community development, her grandfather's role in political organizing, including the use of his church for underground meetings during the anti-Apartheid struggle, and for organizing the burials of children killed by the violent repression of the Apartheid government. She connects the lessons learned from her grandfather’s political activism with her ongoing efforts to promote peace and resilience through poetry and theater.
Read the full story.
| |
|  |
Matvii Vaisberg Prints
Ira Bondarenko Ceramics
Katya Lisova Textiles
from "Between Voices and Silence"
|
|
Upcoming Events
Exhibition: “Between Voice and Silence,” in honor of Ukrainian poet Maksym Kryvtsov
The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Through June 28
“The exhibition ‘Between Voice and Silence' explores the role of empathy and humanity in times of crisis… [T]hrough the lens of works of Ukrainian artists and poets… [it] emphasizes the role of ordinary people in building resilience and saving the state.”
Festival: The Gnaoua and World Music Festival (with a Human Rights Forum)
Essaouira, Morocco
June 25-27
“In addition to its musical celebration, the Gnaoua and World Music Festival in Essaouira sets itself apart through a commitment to stimulate dialogue and reflection upon the great issues that face our societies. For over twelve years, the Human Rights Forum has established itself as a not-to-be-missed space for debate, bringing together intellectuals, artists, and civil society stakeholders to share their thoughts on contemporary challenges. Every year, in the heart of Essaouira, this unique platform casts a spotlight on major issues related to human rights, cultural diversity, freedom of expression, and social mutations. By way of round tables, interventions, and open exchanges, the Forum encourages collective thinking and shared experiences, in the spirit of open-mindedness and dialogue that has become synonymous with the Festival.”
Festival: Playtime Music Festival (with a sustainability focus)
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
July 2-4
“The festival features a wide range of musical genres, from rock, indie, and pop to hip-hop, electronic, and experimental, bringing together some of Mongolia’s best and most internationally renowned artists. In 2024, Playtime Festival built its new venue, Playtime Field… [which is] committed to sustainable development by planting trees, supporting environmentally friendly initiatives such as waste reduction, recycling, and the use of renewable energy… Playtime is not just about music. PT+, an arts and culture program, also hosts art exhibitions, podcasts, poetry, comedy performances, and a variety of health and youth-led events.”
Festival: BlackStar Film Festival
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and online
August 6-9
“BlackStar Projects, the premier organization celebrating visionary Black, Brown and Indigenous film and media artists, is thrilled to announce the selections for the 2026 BlackStar Film Festival… The films in this year’s program speak to collective resistance as they take us around the world from Haiti to Cuba to South Africa and Palestine. The program includes 22 world premieres, 10 North America premieres, 4 United States premieres, 13 East Coast premieres and 34 Philadelphia premieres. Explore a full list of the titles here.”
Exhibition: Epoch Theater: The Climate Crisis on the German Stage
Brandeis University, Farber Library, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
August-November 2026
In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington, D.C., the Department of Theater Arts, and the Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST) Program at Brandeis University, Brandeis’ Center for German and European Studies (CGES) is preparing a special photography exhibition for Fall 2026 entitled Epoch Theater: the Climate Crisis on the German Stage. This exhibition brings together photographic works documenting contemporary theater productions in Germany that engage the climate crisis through the legacy of Bertolt Brecht and the methods of epic theater. Rather than presenting climate change as catastrophe alone or as a distant abstraction measured only through graphs, targets, and forecasts, the exhibition approaches climate as a social relation: historical, material, political, and staged.
The selected productions draw from Brechtian strategies not simply as aesthetic references, but as tools for perception. Epic theater sought to interrupt passive spectatorship. It aimed to make the familiar appear strange, to expose the structures underlying everyday life, and to transform the audience from consumers of narrative into observers of systems. Climate change presents a similar challenge. It is difficult to perceive directly. We encounter weather, infrastructure, consumption, migration, labor, and extraction, but rarely the total system that binds them together.
Photography occupies a particular position within this encounter. Theater is ephemeral; performance disappears. The photograph arrests gesture, relation, and staging. Removed from the continuity of dramatic time, these images become sites of analysis rather than immersion. They preserve not only scenes, but methods of seeing.
For more information, contact Sabine von Mering at vonmering@brandeis.edu.
| |
|
Opportunities
'Home of Hope' Community
Launched by IMPACT, ‘Home of Hope’ is a welcoming, diverse space for collective sharing, learning and solidarity between artists, cultural workers, researchers, community leaders and peacebuilders. It aims to be an inspiring and informative platform for issues related to human rights, social justice, peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Join the community by filling out this form.
Well-Being in the Arts National Art Partners Fund
Deadline: June 29
“The Arab American National Museum (AANM), the Center for Arab American Philanthropy (CAAP), and the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), all national institutions of ACCESS, are working to direct funding to arts and culture organizations that reflect the Arab American or broader immigrant experience.”
Queer|Art – Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists
Deadline: July 2
“The annual $10,000 grant provides critical support to Black trans women whose work has often been under-recognized in the visual art field. This year, a $1,250 award will also be granted to four distinguished finalists.”
Hyundai Motor Group – The 7th VH Award
Deadline: July 21
“A global award for emerging media artists engaging with the context of Asia, featuring grants, a residency with Ars Electronica, and global exhibitions.”
| |
|
Resources
Event reports: 'Solidarity Loom' Weaving a Global Network of Engaged Creatives In a World of Rising Authoritarianism
January–June 2026
Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts partnerd with IMPACT and others in convening Solidarity Loom - a six-month virtual series that brought together creators, thinkers, and organizers who are shaping inclusive, participatory futures through the arts. From January to June 2026, five global sessions—each co-designed with regional and thematic partners—explored youth activism, cultural strategies for democratic renewal, Indigenous governance, artist protection, and gendered dimensions of authoritarianism.
Book: Art Against Brutality: Community and Collaborative Art Projects with Survivors of Political Violence
By Claudia Bernardi
New Village Press
“The book Art Against Brutality by Claudia Bernardi documents selected community-based and collaborative art projects developed in Latin America and the United States that have been facilitated over the past thirty years with survivors of human rights violations and political violence.”
Panel Recording: Theatre in Times of War and State Violence
HowlRound Theatre
Recorded on June 4, 2026
“Featuring theatre directors and ensemble leaders with personal and artistic roots in Lebanon, Nigeria, Palestine, India, the Twin Cities [Minneapolis and St. Paul], and more, this conversation investigates how theatres and artists are responding [to, and] connecting with local and international justice movements, and envisioning the future of our collective work in the context of political crisis.”
Film: Walking Our Way (Caminar Distinto)
Directed by Lizet Chávez
“Walking Our Way (Caminar Distinto) is a short film that follows nine young artists from Bogotá, Lima and Buenos Aires as they navigate life in their cities and reflect on their emotional worlds. Their journeys reveal how art can open space for dialogue, challenge stigma and offer new ways of thinking about mental health among young people in Latin America.” Produced by People’s Palace Projects.
Podcast: Art is Change Episode 182: "Arts Freedom Weather Report - Who Speaks - Who Belongs?"
June 17
Bill Cleveland invites all "to join us for a timely exploration of how artists, cultural organizations, and everyday citizens [in the U.S.] are using imagination not only to resist authoritarian pressures, but to create more welcoming, inclusive, and democratic communities."
Explore more resources.
| |
|
View our privacy policy. Opt out at any time by clicking the "opt out" link below.
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
Global Community Engagement, COMPACT
Brandeis University
415 South Street | MS 086 | Waltham, MA 02454-9110
To comment on 'Peacebuilding and the Arts Now'
or to join the listserv, send a message here. |
|
|
|
