Peacebuilding and the Arts

IMPACT: Creating Hope Together Virtual Series
Arts for Inclusive Democracy
June 25, 2.00 pm CET | 9.00 am EST | 10 pm JST

Join IMPACT (Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture) for a thought-provoking virtual event delving into the complexities surrounding the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, using a systems theory approach. Against the backdrop of shifting political landscapes, IMPACT invites you to explore the trends fueling authoritarian tendencies in various parts of the world.
The discussions will lay the groundwork for understanding the multifaceted challenges confronting democracy worldwide.
While navigating this landscape, the conversation will pivot to a crucial question: How can artists and cultural workers serve as catalysts for inclusive democracies? Through intimate small-group conversations, the participants will brainstorm innovative strategies and partnerships to foster resilience in our communities.
Together, we will envision a future where creativity and collaboration intersect to amplify voices and fortify democratic values. Join IMPACT in shaping the agenda for future events, as we embark on a journey toward meaningful impact and lasting change.

Register online.

 

Production: The Secret Sharer
DNAWorks (Dialogue and Healing Through the Arts) presents the dance-theater piece The Secret Sharer , based on the novella by Joseph Conrad. “Considered an early Queer text, The Secret Sharer integrates dance/music/text/projections and will be performed in an open-concept space with audiences co-creating the environment and the narrative. In an extension of our community storycircle practice, audience members share their stories during the performance, interspersed at critical moments in the narrative. This devised work is an exploration of fragility, tenderness, and intimacy in times of personal danger and societal discrimination – the narrative of a silent, shared connection between two outsiders in the face of violence. In response to an increase in both hate crimes and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ youth suicides worldwide, we are creating spaces for resiliency and healing.” The production will begin touring in August 2024. Click on “The Secret Sharer Info Pack” on the left side of the web page for more information.

Book: The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding
By Marty Branagan
“The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding details aspects of cultures, including language, films, journalism, political economics, museums, education, parenting, gender, artistic activism, and spirituality, which can contribute to either more violent societies or more peaceful ones. Solutions-oriented, it aims to inspire deep understanding and reflection, empowerment, and grassroots action in cultural spheres.”

Book: Borders to Bridges: Arts-Based Curriculum for Social Justice
By Janice Frame
“Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion to counter the myths, bullying, and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions. The Guidebook contains practical lesson plans, narratives, poetry, mixed media artwork and resources for K-12 educators, and after-school, refugee, counseling, prison, adult, university, and teacher training education programs. Borders to Bridges enriches learning and engages students with issues that touch their lives and communities. Contributors include world-renowned educators, poets, artists, and writers from 38 countries and 20 states of the U.S.”
Check out:

• Related Resources mentioned in each lesson of Borders to Bridges

• A 6-minute video of the How-To Experiential Learning workshop that shares ways to use the book

 

Documentary film: Safe Haven
By Lisa Molomot
“The film weaves together stories of U.S. war resisters who sought refuge in Canada during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The film shows how Vietnam era resisters participated in a movement to support the younger generation of U.S. soldiers and exposes myths and realities of Canada as a safe haven.”

Read what professors are saying about the film and learn more about streaming rights OR on Kanopy.

 

New cultural space: artsasfoundation opens art space in Yerevan
“In response to the mass exodus of over 100,000 Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to Armenia due to the Azerbaijani military offensive last September, we are opening an art space in Yerevan. The Living Room is a connecting space for displaced communities from Nagorno-Karabakh where Armenian and international artists will be working together in varied social and artistic forms. Through art we want to encourage those who have lost their homes to resist a permanent self-identification as victims. The aim of the Living Room is to enable and promote encounters between artists and local communities engaging with creative and grass-rooted, conflict-sensitive approaches and imagining a peaceful future. We offer a space for various uses where people can experience their own creative power, for example, through family celebrations, movie nights, community events, workshops for children and adolescents, and interactive art activities with community involvement. With the help of our donors, we were able to find a suitable space, a two-room apartment on the ground floor in a peripheral district of Yerevan where many refugees are housed. By mid-June 2024, the space will be fully furnished, and activities can begin.”

 

Art and Social Transformation Lab /artsasfoundation
Deadline: June 30
"For its first international activity in the Living Room, artasfoundation invites artists, art educators, researchers, and cultural practitioners in an Open Call to join a seven-day laboratory on art and social transformation. The laboratory is designed as a learning and experimenting space for 12 participants to create artistic practices engaging with communities, encouraging them to take control of their lives and deal with past, present and future struggles through creative methods.
Apply online.
Lab time: August 6-12, 2024
Location: The Living Room – Arshakunyats 26, 0023, Yerevan, Armenia
Application Deadline: June 30, 23.59 CET"

Pride Month celebrates and honors LGBTQIA+ communities across the globe, as well as their history, accomplishments, and ongoing struggles for justice and equality. LGBTQIA+ people and allies alike continue to advocate for rights – often creatively – and to amplify their voices as LGBTQIA+ individuals are facing renewed or increased attacks on their visibility and safety, and on the right to be who they are. One way to counter this is by supporting - and voting for - leaders who advocate for queer and trans people. Please check out the articles and short documentaries we’ve listed below in recognition of Pride Month. We start with pieces that shine a light on specific situations of precarity or danger, and move on to essays and films that highlight creative contributions to initiatives that thwart repression and erasure. 

 

Gay rights activists call for more international pressure on Uganda over anti-LGBTQ law
By Risdel Kasasira/Associated Press, PBS News
“Ugandan gay rights activists asked the international community to mount more pressure on the government of Uganda to repeal an anti-gay law which the country’s Constitutional Court refused to nullify” in April of this year.

 

Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2024
By the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
“Choose a state on the map to show the different bills targeting LGBTQ rights and taks action. While not all of these bills will become law, they all cause harm for LGBTQ people.”

 

 Pride Calendar
“The LGBTQ+ rights movement has made tremendous strides over the past few decades and much of the progress in visibility is thanks in part to gay pride parades and marches that have taken place in cities around the world.”

 

Helping LGBTQ+ People in Latin America Achieve Their Dreams
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) “works with LGBTQ+ refugees and members of the local community in Latin America and the Caribbean... [They] work with grassroots and community-based organizations to provide mental health support, gender-based violence prevention services, legal assistance and economic inclusion programs.”

 

Queer Dramaturgies in Turkish Theatre
Kunafa and Shay (podcast)
“In our third season, we highlight queer MENA and SWANA or Southwest Asian North African theatremakers and dive into the breadth of queerness present in their art.”

 

Balancing Trauma and Joy While Teaching Queer Theatre History
By John Michael Diresta/HowlRound Theatre Commons
“As a white gay man in my early forties, I do not know what it is to walk through life as a lesbian, or a trans person, a nonbinary person, or a person of color. Many of my students fall into those categories, and I don’t claim to have answers for them as to how to process their lived experiences. I am also something many of my students are not—a queer person who risked losing everything when he came out and who put himself at risk of HIV conversion with every sexual encounter before the advent of PREP. I am glad that so many of my students now come out into the open arms that I did not find and can live lives less fettered by sexual anxiety. But I am afraid that these strides have stolen from my students the opportunity to connect with the long history of queer liberators that came before us.”

 

The Guardian has produced a series of relevant short documentaries:

SAINTMAKING (The canonization of Derek Jarman by queer “nuns” in the UK)
2021 was the “30th anniversary of film-maker Derek Jarman’s canonisation by an activist group of gay male ‘nuns’ known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. At the time, in 1991, Derek Jarman was the most prominent person in the UK living openly with HIV. He was outspoken, radical and unapologetically queer.”

BEIRUT Dreams in Color (The queer revolution in the Middle East)
“Mashrou’ Leila were one of the biggest bands in the Middle East, with a lead singer, Hamed, who is the most prominent openly gay rock star in the Arab world. Known globally, their gigs were regular sell-out successes until an event at their 2017 Cairo concert changed everything.”

OLD LESBIANS (An oral ‘herstory’ archive project in the United States)
“From the first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out and from loss to connection. For the last 25 years, retired schoolteacher Arden Eversmeyer travelled from Houston across the US to record hundreds of oral ‘herstories’ from a rapidly disappearing population. Old Lesbians honours Arden’s legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project.”