Peacebuilding and the Arts

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.”

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.

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.”

The First Peoples Fund Native Performing Arts Fellowship
Deadline: July 15
“The First Peoples Fund (FPF) Native Performing Arts (NPA) Fellowship supports emerging and established Native performing artists to develop and enhance their skills and knowledge of their craft. This fellowship provides grants of up to $10,000 for Native individuals who practice or work within the performing arts landscape (theater, dance, music, etc.). Applicants are expected to create a proposal centered around artistic career goals… The program strives to provide Native performing artists more equitable access to the resources they need to enhance their creations and their careers.”

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.”

'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.

Event reports: 'Solidarity Loom' Weaving a Global Network of Engaged Creatives In a World of Rising Authoritarianism
January–June 2026
The 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.”

Book: Photography From Yemen
Edited by Ibi Ibrahim and Lizzy Varanian
Makan Press
GQ Middle East has published an insightful review of the book: “Inside ‘Photography From Yemen,’ the First Survey of Contemporary Yemeni Photography”
by Samantha Jensen
GQ Middle East
December 24, 2025
“Born from loss and urgency, Makan Press’s debut book gathers fourteen Yemeni photographers to reclaim visibility, memory, and self-representation… Photography from Yemen, … the first survey of its kind, actively challenges this monolithic narrative [of Yemen being “reduced in the media to a place defined by war, conflict, and despair”] by complicating the notion of home, framing it as a place fragmented by the realities of colonialism, yet simultaneously as a place that is multidimensional, fluid, deeply individual, and deeply profound. Bringing together fourteen photographers across three generations, working both inside Yemen and across its diaspora, the book presents an expansive vision of Yemeni life. While war and conflict exist for them, so too do dreams of dignity, creativity, and self-determination.”

Book: Art Beyond the Edge: Creativity and Conflict in a World on Fire  
By Mark LeVine and Bryan Reynolds
University of California Press
“Art Beyond the Edge is not just a title: it's a designation, a call to action, and a means to achieve enduring impact. Reflecting over a quarter century of collaborative artistic production, research, and activism across five continents, this book is a field-breaking and era-defining exploration of art created during sociopolitical conflict and war, protests and calamities, and their aftermaths. With the goal of generating a critical theory that can meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, Mark LeVine and Bryan Reynolds propose a new and radical vocabulary, epistemological foundation, and praxiological roadmap for engagement with and in performance activism and political art. From Gaza to Chiapas, Baghdad to Kabul, the Niger Delta to the Congo River, the US to Ukraine, the authors establish an innovative matrix to analyze the conditions through which artistic production empowers struggles for freedom, dignity, and survival in a world on fire.”

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.

Film: Ojakh, on the Other Side of Silence
Directed by Diana Mkrtchyan
A documentary film (by a French-Armenian filmmaker) about a Turkish photographer “seeing” the legacies of the Armenian genocide, and his own community’s complicity in it, in part through his camera lens.

Podcast: Art is Change: “Derek Goldman: What Happens When the Stranger Walks in Your Shoes?”
“In this episode of ART IS CHANGE, theater artist and educator Derek Goldman shares how performance can become a civic practice – not simply entertainment, but a way for people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the deeper responsibilities of citizenship.”

Podcast: Art is Change Episode 182: "Arts Freedom Weather Report - Who Speaks - Who Belongs?"
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."

Podcast: TAI Full Disclosure: “Rethinking Resilience”
“In this episode, Eszter Filippinyi and Vanja Skoric bring together civil society leaders from Ukraine, Serbia, Kenya, Brazil...The conversation moves beyond simple ideas of ‘bouncing back’ and instead presents resilience as something collective, contextual, and deeply connected to care, trust, and shared purpose…Rather than treating resilience as a matter of endurance alone, the episode explores how it can also mean adapting strategically, supporting one another, redistributing leadership, and rethinking what sustainability looks like in practice.”

Podcast: Photographers Without Borders: “Storytelling for Change Podcast”
“Meet the world’s leading visual storytellers on the front lines making real impact. Learn from change-makers around the world, be inspired, and challenge yourself to decolonize storytelling… Hosted by PWB [Photographers Without Borders] Founder and award-winning storyteller, Dani Khan De Silva.”

Publisher: Interlink Foundation
“The Interlink Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to sharing stories and writing from the Global South and historically under-resourced communities, with the aim of informing and expanding public discourse on issues of global significance, and in order to preserve and archive cultural heritage in the face of erasure.”