I’ve been sensing lately that the field of Peacebuilding and the Arts is gathering credibility in the large peacebuilding field, from both practitioners and policymakers. I’m wondering if readers of this newsletter are experiencing a similar development.

The last few months have witnessed groundbreaking convenings in various parts of the world. In April, the District Institute of the Arts of the mayor’s office in Bogotá convened a World Summit on Art and Culture for Peace in Colombia. Over 10,000 artists, activists and educators registered for the event, witnessing concerts and performances, participating in panel discussions, watching films, marching in demonstrations, and meeting up with old and new friends and colleagues.

Also in April, two conferences were held on Cyprus: BuildPeace and the closing symposium of Songs of my Neighbors. Acting Together’s Lee Perlman and Dijana Milošević were there, as was Diomedes Koufteros, a friend who joined our network at the International Peace Research Association conference in Istanbul last summer and who coordinated the Songs of my Neighbors project. Their reflections on the convenings are below.

In May, the Hague Institute for Global Justice hosted the first meeting of the research team of City Responsibility: The Role of Municipalities in Violence Prevention, a 30-month project researching the role of municipalities (including civil society actors) in preventing and exacerbating urban violence. The project’s leaders are including perspectives of arts and culture in their inquiry – thinking of the arts as modes of inquiry as well forms of intervention. I’m hoping that readers of this newsletter will submit a research memo sharing insights about violence in particular urban areas, and the role that the arts are playing in ameliorating or exacerbating violent conflict. Please see the sidebar of this newsletter and our  News page for more details and contribute your perspectives on the role of arts and culture in urban violence; it isn’t that often that artists are invited to the table in shaping a major research project like this – so your input is especially significant now.

Also in May, the Swiss NGO ArtsAsFoundation for Peace teamed up with the  Swiss Agency for Development and the Zurich University of the Arts to host an unusually interactive practitioners’ forum, in order to connect experts with different backgrounds (arts, development cooperation, research) and to foster exchange about their experience-based knowledge and trans-disciplinary practices.  Half of the participants were development practitioners working in Switzerland and in conflict regions around the world; and the modes of engagement -- small group conversations based on project displays; gatherings focused in particular dilemmas raised by participants, facilitated working groups -- were particularly interactive.  ArtsAsFoundation’s director Dagmar Reichert offered an especially thought-provoking presentation on the paradoxes inherent in our work.

As the ugliness of racism in the U.S. rears its head in the most painful of ways, artists and cultural workers continue to make meaning of what has been happening, to protest and heal. A recent issue of the Huffington Post captures the power of artists’ responses to the Charleston shootings.

Please send information about your projects, books, convenings, and thoughts – and we will post them on our website and when space, publish them in upcoming editions of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now.

All the best,
Cindy
Cynthia E. Cohen, Ph.D., Director
Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts