Background
The PeaceMAPP project focuses on the nexus between art and peacebuilding. In conflict regions around the world, theatre artists and cultural workers are making significant contributions to sustainable peace and coexistence. Performances are facilitating relationships across the lines of enmity. Theatrical works are mediating between competing historical narratives. Performance and visual art are supporting communities to acknowledge violations of human rights, to mourn losses, and to empathize with the suffering of the other. In the aftermath of violence, artists and cultural workers are negotiating the complex ethical terrain inscribed by memories of the past, imperatives toward justice, and desires for peace. These works of art engage people in experiences that open possibilities for new insights and new relationships. Aesthetic engagement can engender transformations in consciousness, social relations, cultural practices, and legal arrangements.
As part of the PeaceMAPP project, ACPACS has hosted two arts and peacebuilding workshops, bringing together a diverse range of artists and peacebuilders who have explored the ways in which their fields can be interwoven in ways that facilitate sustainable conflict transformation and peacebuilding.
Partners
ACPACS is currently involved in the creation of an anthology entitled Performance and Peacebuilding in Global Perspectives. Dr. Polly O. Walker is one of the co-editors of the text, along with Dr. Cynthia Cohen, Executive Director of the Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence and Director of Coexistence Research and International Collaborations at Brandeis University; Ms. Roberta Levitow, founder of Theatre Without Borders, and a noted American theatre director who, as a senior Fulbright specialist, has worked with emerging theatre artists in Romania, China and Uganda; Roberto Varea, director of the Performance and Social Justice Program at the University of San Francisco; and Prof. Kevin Clements is a member of the editorial advisory panel. This anthology will document and reflect on promising contemporary examples of compelling performance works directly linked to restoring active participation in civil society, and to facilitating the construction of peace. It consists of case studies that situate performances in their relevant historical, social and political contexts. The case studies describe productions as well as the processes leading up to them, assess their impact, and evaluate their contributions to establishing sustainable peace in their region of the world. The volume is designed to be a resource for artists, cultural workers and peacebuilding practitioners working in conflict regions, as well as for scholars and students of Performance Studies, Conflict Transformation, and related fields.
Enquiries
Please contact p.walker2@uq.edu.au.