Examples of Culture for Hope
Names, links, and descriptions of projects, initiatives, organizations, and artists engaged with culture for hope. Organized alphabetically by project title or artist name. The resource will be continuously expanded. Project descriptions in quotation marks are from the project websites unless otherwise credited.
Acting Together on the World Stage
https://www.atwsresources.com/
“The purpose of the Acting Together project is to document, strengthen and celebrate the contributions of performance and ritual to conflict transformation. It’s primary method is to engage artists, leaders of ritual, cultural workers and peacebuilders who are working in regions of violent conflict and oppression in documenting and reflecting on their work, and sharing their stories and performances with others.”
Action for Hope
“Action for Hope believes in the role of arts and culture in empowering individuals and communities, particularly those in distress. We provide people with access to culture and tools for creative expression to enrich their lives, increase the cultural capital of communities around them, and enable their contribution to our shared humanity.”
Afghan Women’s Writing Project
https://frictionlit.org/afghan-womens-writing-project/
Annos One Fine Day
https://www.annosonefineday.org/
"Anno’s One Fine Day is a community based organization in Kibera, founded in 2018 by Krysteen Savane as an affiliate of Anno’s Africa and One Fine Day. Anno’s One Fine Day has developed an educational program where children and young adults can explore their artistic abilities and art as a tool to better understand themselves and the world they live in."
Art and Reconciliation
https://artreconciliation.org/
"Art & Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community is a multi-year, collaborative and inter-disciplinary research project that ran from 2016-2019. Art and Reconciliation set out to question the potential of arts-based and creative approaches to reconciliation. Arts-based approaches have attracted increasing attention in recent years, seen as welcome alternatives to more mechanistic and institutional approaches to peacebuilding and transitional justice. But we know little about their impact, beyond anecdotal stories of success and failure. One key aim of the project therefore was to develop a more systematic understanding of the potential advantages and pitfalls of these sorts of approaches, as well as developing our understanding of what reconciliation might entail in different contexts and to different constituencies. Art and Reconciliation explored the concept and practice of reconciliation combining approaches from history and conflict resolution, art and creative practice, and both qualitative and quantitative social science methods in three strands: History, Practice and Discourse."
The Art of Peace, project housed at Manchester University
https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/the-art-of-peace/
“A three-year project funded by AHRC exploring the role of arts in four different situations of conflict to make peace.”
Banksy's street art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy
Bond Street Theatre
“Founded in 1976, Bond Street Theatre initiates creative programming that inspires and educates youth, addresses human rights issues, provides tools for healing communities affected by conflict, and promotes the value of the arts in shaping a peaceful future. The company responds to humanitarian crises through the uplifting powers of the arts. The company has initiated innovative theatre and theatre-based programs in over 40 countries worldwide, and reached populations in refugee camps, schools, shelters, prisons, rural villages and urban centers. Bond Street Theatre’s mission is to promote peace and mutual understanding through the arts. The company initiates creative programming for conflict resolution and peacebuilding that reach women, youth, children, educators, refugees, those in prisons and shelters, and other populations in need.”
Community Arts Network
https://www.community-arts.net/
A rich resource page with many case examples. “CAN was co-created by visionaries who believe that the transformative power of the arts can be engaged for social impact. It is a global platform that aims to enable, engage and empower individuals, organisations and communities through arts and unlikely alliances to generate meaningful change and shape a humane future, together.”
Culture for Peace
http://www.culture-for-peace.org/
“Art can be a powerful tool in processes of social change and conflict transformation.... Culture defines and generates modalities of thought, paradigm and action as well as modes of planning, memory and communication.... They hold the potential to sustainably transform cultural violence and defamation, to develop people's personalities, to provide a framework for building relationships beyond one’s own groups and to increase future potentials.
All projects of Culture for Peace support local efforts for non-violent, civil and democratic empowerment while we connect local partners with communities and other change makers regardless of religion, ethnicity, caste, gender, age or political background.”
Dear Earth, art exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/dear-earth
“This group show of artistic responses to the climate emergency explores themes of care, hope, interdependence, emotional and spiritual connection, and activism.”
Global Art Project for Peace
https://www.globalartproject.org/about/projectdescription.html
“Project Mission
The mission of the Global Art Project is to joyously create a culture of peace through art. The Project celebrates diversity and multi-culturalism while expressing the idea: We Are All One.
Project Description
Nominated for a UNESCO Prize, the Global Art Project is an international art exchange for peace which has involved 160,000 participants in 95 countries on seven continents. 200+ Regional Coordinators help to organize and spread the word in their part of the world. The Project was founded in Tucson, Arizona, USA in 1993 by artist, Katherine Josten.”
Musicians without Borders
https://www.musicianswithoutborders.org/
“Musicians Without Borders is a leader in using music for peacebuilding and social change. Music empowers, creates connection, and strengthens empathy. We work to inspire and support musicians everywhere to use the power of music to create positive change in their communities. In collaboration with local musicians and organizations, we bring music to people and places affected by war, armed conflict, and displacement.”
Peacebuilding and the Arts, Brandeis University
https://www.brandeis.edu/peacebuilding-arts/index.html
“The program focuses on the distinctive contributions of culture and the arts to the transformation of conflict.”
Peace of Art, Lebanon
https://www.peaceofartinternational.org/
“Peace of Art is a non-profit organization that uses Art and culture in place of conflict and violence as tools to promote Peace. We create groups of young changemakers to be the future leaders in Art and to transform a culture of violence, discrimination, extremism and ignorance into tolerance, acceptance, development, and freedom. We do this through designed programs that focus on fine Art training (music, theater, photography, film making, drawing), and civil training (citizenship, acceptance toward others, leadership skills, conflict mediation and resolution).”
The Syrian Refugee Art Initiative
https://joelartista.com/syrian-refugees-the-zaatari-project-jordan/
“There is a lack of arts and culture that enrich the human experience and no platform for refugee voices to reach out to the world to tell their own stories. To address these issues, I’ve been traveling to Jordan since 2013 to facilitate mural arts projects with Syrian youth and their families. Through organization that I co-direct, Artolution, we’ve teamed up with Syrian artists and educators in the Za’atari and Azraq refugee camps. We lead discussion and art-making in which Syrians explore their longing to return to Syria, their dreams for the future, and their current plight as refugees.”
Taller de Vida
Theatre for Living
https://theatreforliving.com/index.htm
“During its 37 year life, Theatre for Living (Headlines Theatre) Society produced many hundreds of projects and became recognized as a world leader in community specific, issue-oriented theatre, winning numerous awards. While the work became to be known as THEATRE FOR LIVING, it is based on Brazilian Director Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. … Theatre by the community for the community. The company has worked with many groups around the world including First Nations, refugees, women's groups, environmentalists, street youth, health practitioners, and the homeless population.”
The Wedding Play, Northern Ireland, 1999
Cleveland, William. “The Wedding Play – Northern Ireland.” Art and Upheaval: Artists ofn the World’s Frontlines, Oakland, CA: New Village Press, 2008, pp. 13-47.
Moriarty, Gerri. “The Wedding Community Play Project: A Cross-Community Production in Northern Ireland.” Theatre and Empowerment, edited by Richard Boone and Jane Plastow, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 13–32, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486166.002.
Murphy, Ciara L. “Storytelling and Performance Post-Good Friday Agreement.” Performing Social Change on the Island of Ireland, vol. 1, Routledge, 2023, pp. 16–32, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003211679-2.
Wedding Drama. Archived webpage by the BBC series Eyewitness, https://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/eyewitness/better/wedding/index.shtml. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
https://west-eastern-divan.org/
“For 25 years, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has been a significant presence in the international music world. In 1999, Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said created a workshop for young musicians to promote coexistence and intercultural dialogue. They named the orchestra and workshop after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s collection of poems West-Eastern Divan, a central work for the development of the concept of world culture. The orchestra’s first rehearsal sessions took place in Weimar and Chicago. An equal number of Israeli and Arab musicians form the base of the ensemble, together with members from Turkey, Iran, and Spain. They meet each summer for rehearsals, followed by an international concert tour.”
World Hope Forum
https://www.youtube.com/@worldhopeforum3695/featured
“The World Hope Forum is an organisation created in spring 2020, during the depth of the pandemic caused by Covid-19 and founded by Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano, in collaboration with Dezeen as media partner. The World Hope Forum’s main goal is to create a holistic global platform for the exchange and expansion of knowledge, innovation of business practices, resetting of making methods, invention of alternative models, and the rethinking of rituals for selling, sharing and bartering – as well as other initiatives yet to be discovered. Many themes are on our horizon, such as climate, inclusivity, waste management, cooperation, indigenous design, archeology as a source of inspiration, and the humanities to be included in the way we design. Ideas about slowing down and scaling down, integrating people and planet in all we do.”