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Welcome to the Imagining Together Platform for Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation (IMPACT), a worldwide, values-driven collaboration to design and activate strategies to strengthen the arts, culture and conflict transformation ecosystem (acct). This ecosystem includes individuals and organizations working on the international stage and in local neighborhoods - sometimes at great risk - creating festivals and crafting policies, documenting practices and developing theories, enlivening communities and building bridges across differences. In this ecosystem, we imagine and embody a more just, more vibrant, less violent world.

The grand challenges confronting humanity – climate change, growing inequalities, wars and legacies of past wars, displacement, the rise of authoritarian regimes, political and social polarization, and more - call for urgent creative attention beyond the linear, rational approaches that have proved insufficient and often counter-productive. The acct ecosystem addresses these challenges in distinct, constructive, transformative ways. With investment and support, this ecosystem could be even more effective.

• Based on the sense of urgency and commitment of diverse and remarkable leaders directly involved with IMPACT, IMPACT calls for a platform to strengthen acct and maximize its effectiveness.
• A platform of stable, interconnected structures can lay groundwork for a global civil society committed to values that sustain life and to holding those with political, economic, and cultural power accountable to those values.
• A platform of diverse players across acct can foster experimentation and creative problem-solving based on collaboration across disciplines, cultures, regions, worldviews, and modes of communication.
• A values-driven platform can acknowledge divisions that have limited acct in the past and build the relationships of trust and trustworthiness that are needed for acct to fulfill its potential.

IMPACT seeks partnerships with people, institutions, and networks that share our values; our concerns for our communities, planet, and future; and our commitment to creativity.

How do we think about futures, let alone imagine them?
- Refilwe Nkomo

IMPACT's 18-month planning process was financially supported in large part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  

Recent News:

• IMPACT is partnering with Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival in Cyprus to launch the "Thinking Partners" initiative
• IMPACT participated in the Fifth International Teaching Artists Conference (ITAC) in September 2020
• The summaries of "Imagining Together/Acting" Together learning exchange held in April 2020 are out
• "Creative Approaches to Gender-Based Violence in Africa" virtual Learning Exchange took place in September 2020

Read more in IMPACT's report!

We invite you to explore this and more in the IMPACT report, which came out of IMPACT’s planning phase:

Imagine IMPACT: An Emerging Strategy to Strengthen the Arts, Culture, and Conflict Transformation Ecosystem.

Read the report overview.

Read the full report.

Grounded in real world examples, this report:

• makes the case for the power of arts and culture to transform conflict
• summarizes learning from exchanges - with hundreds of artists, peacebuilders, scholars, funders, policymakers, and others - about the strengths of the acct ecosystem and the challenges it faces
• advocates for a platform to support the acct ecosystem
• proposes an emerging platform: a web of teams crafting virtual and in person spaces where knowledge can be shared, ethical dilemmas can receive sustained attention, advocacy strategies can be developed and advanced, risks of harm can be minimized, and relationships of reciprocity can be formed

IMPACT: Imagining Together

The Distinct Power of Arts to Transform Conflict

Strategic Priorities and Plans

Values and Discourse Principles

Learning Exchanges

Convenings

Multilingual Reports

Our History

People

Partners

Get Involved

Questions or ideas? Please contact IMPACT’s Project Manager Armine Avetisyan: impact@brandeis.edu.