How and why do arts and other aspects of culture contribute in constructive ways to addressing the complex challenges that confront humanity and the ecosystems of the planet?
Listen to this story told by John Paul Lederach, peacebuilding scholar/practitioner and thinking partner to those of us writing this report:
About 15 years ago in Nepal, an event took place in a workshop that relates the unusual link between the arts, peacebuilding and change processes. It happened shortly after a comprehensive peace agreement was ending the 10-year Maoist war, arranged through negotiation between the major political parties and had ousted the king, ending the royalty in Nepal. I was part of group that had put forward a small proposal. Because the army had only ever reported to the king — it was called the Royal Nepal Army — and now with a peace agreement in place a new reality was emergent. In principle, the army would begin a transition toward civilian, and eventually elected government oversight and accountability. In this complex transition, the army generals had rarely if ever formally sat with the key politicians from across the spectrum political parties because their reporting mechanisms had exclusively taken place within the royalty structure.
At this off-record workshop we brought together a number of top generals and high-level politicians from ten political parties. Now, you might ask yourself if any possible link could made the would connect the arts in such a formalized and tense meeting — is there any place for the arts in a conversation with dozens of generals and politicians, most of them quite on in age and all of them male given the nature of their Nepali structures and hierarchy at the time.
In the afternoon, prior to our supper, we asked them to participate in an exercise that involved mixed teams of 3-4 people. Each person had to develop a story around this context: Imagine twenty years from now, where your great grandchild crawling up on your lap before bed and asking you to tell a story. "Tell me again, Grandpa tell me again, how did the war end?" Their task was to tell a bedtime story to their great-grandchild about how the war ended and what they had done. That was the only assignment.
Our process required each person to give some thought to their story alone. Then they met in small groups and started to share out their ideas and even try out some storytelling. Finally, from the different groups a few people were selected to tell their story, live and with all the animation and embellishment they could muster.
As it turned out, there were some great grandfatherly storytellers. The exercise lasted most of the afternoon and even pushed us past our suppertime. I have never seen generals or politicians laugh so hard. At times the laughter bordered on tears because embedded in the process was a deep emotion tied to what they had lived but also to what might be coming and thinking about this with reference to their youngest family members. Each story tried to outdo the one preceding it, and in the end, they eventually gave garlands to the best stories. It was quite a fascinating process. It taught me a lot about taking the risk to try something different, even with people you might assume would refuse to participate in such an assignment. — John Paul Lederach, April 22, 2021.
The many complex challenges facing our global communities include unresolved legacies of violence; the climate crisis and its multiple manifestations; gross inequalities based on colonial histories and on identities including race, caste, gender, sexual orientation or ability; the rise of authoritarianism and polarization within societies; forced migration and displacement; violent extremism; and the rapid loss of species, languages, musical traditions and whole cultures. Ethical arts and cultural processes can be crafted to evoke honesty, and nourish capacities to negotiate ambiguity and paradox, key features of complex systems: They unleash creativity and agency. They affirm the dignity of human beings and our interdependence with each other and the natural world.
And they can be crafted to do all this not by manipulation or coercion, but by issuing invitations to engage, to enjoy, to co-construct meaning, and to be present — to oneself, to others, to the natural world and to the opportunities and challenges that inscribe the present moment. These invitations are issued through the aesthetic dimensions of both processes and products that are designed to enliven, challenge and/or soothe by taking into account the perceptual capacities and preferences of those who witness and participate. It is through their beauty, and through the ways they simultaneously animate our sensory, cognitive and emotional faculties, that ethical arts and cultural work invite transformation while respecting the integrity of all who are involved. They can be crafted to offer this bounty of possibilities and in fact are indispensable to engaging constructively with the intertwined complex challenges urgently calling for attention.
In this report, we invite many readers into what might be unfamiliar and unexpected discourses in hopes of igniting creative thinking, rather than trying to convince through numbers and arguments. We take the perspective that the many challenges now confronting us are interconnected and all part of a
culture of unsustainability. To change these dominant patterns, transformations are required which cannot be made through reasoning alone. Artistic and cultural practices offer modes of understanding and acting that are aligned with complexity, and will contribute to an emerging paradigm: a
culture of sustainability.
We considered nine distinctive features that characterize engagement with and through arts and culture:
beauty, dignity, interdependence, honesty, paradox, ambiguity, agency and creativity and multiple modes of knowing. We conclude that ethical arts and cultural processes have a transformative power that:
- INVITES people into aesthetic experiences, aligning senses, cognition, emotions and spirit. These experiences can be crafted to engender distinctive ways of paying attention to reality, opening perception to complexities that might be difficult to face in the flow of everyday life. They engage multiple ways of thinking, sensing, feeling, imagining and meaning-making that go beyond the purely rational, offering experiences of beauty. Beauty is experienced when there is a pleasurable alignment between the formal qualities of an expression and the perceptual sensibilities, capacities and preferences of those who witness and participate.
- AFFIRMS dignity and interdependence. Ethical arts and cultural processes can be crafted to embody, evoke and engender recognition of dignity and awareness of interdependence.
- EVOKES feelings and honest exploration where repeated traumas and ongoing oppressions have resulted in numbness and silencing; and nourishes capacities to embrace the paradox and ambiguity that characterize complexity.
- UNLEASHES individual and collective agency and creativity.
We will illustrate these points through exploration of these nine distinctive qualities of the arts and related examples. These artistic and cultural practices are indispensable to engaging constructively with multiple complex challenges.
After an exploration and analysis of diverse perspectives on the nine distinctive features of engagement with arts and culture listed above, and considering ways in which these qualities are incorporated into other fields (such as nursing, business, conflict transformation and urban studies), we offer a set of recommendations:
- Find new ways to reframe complex challenges as interconnected and move toward a culture of sustainability.
- Invest more resources over longer time periods in the field of arts and culture.
- Focus on ethical, anti-oppressive, aesthetic, locally-rooted, and trauma-informed practices in artistic and cultural initiatives and beyond.
- Align practices and processes with complexity, using systems-based approaches.
- Meaningfully engage artists and cultural workers in decision-making spaces, especially where they historically have been excluded.
- Protect freedom of expression and artists' human rights.
- Further document the power of arts and culture, gather collective insights and build on this report.
This report is an invitation to engage with the extraordinary challenges and opportunities of the present moment by:
- Inviting beauty into our lives and into the world, summoning all modes of sense-making.
- Affirming dignity and interdependence.
- Embracing ambiguities and paradoxes and evoking honesty in the space where tears and laughter meet.
- Unleashing our own and each other's agency and creativity.
Read the full report.
Read the essay Art Evokes!
Read the essay Art Affirms!
Read the essay Art Invites!