Creativity for Peace Festival: Creative Methodologies for Unearthing Hidden War Stories

我们的和平节项目(PF)确定了一些杰出的团体和倡议，这些团体和倡议放大了挑战秘鲁和哥伦比亚官方历史的边缘化人民的声音。它成功地促成了来自这些团体的和平活动家在哥伦比亚卡塔赫纳德印第安斯的聚会，讨论和创作关于他们如何使用创造性的方法来讲述关于冲突和暴力的故事、他们的方法挑战和可能性以及颠覆既定说法的另类叙事的艺术。这种创造性的对话和思考空间有效地促进了包容性民主和可持续和平。我们撰写了一篇多人撰写的文章，阐述了这种与和平活动家合作的新方法的理论和方法教训，目前正在审查中，以供出版。2018年5月，在巴塞罗那举行的拉丁美洲研究协会大会上发表了第二篇论文，考察了创造性方法论的成就。在后续的和平节创意活动中，我们计划在学术界和活动家社区进一步扩大创意空间，基于最初的PF对其他跨学科和社区组织的联合制作倡议的三个关键见解：1)通过积极参与情感创造的体现，促进了知识的共享和共同产生。2)拥抱参与者自己的目标和战略具有内在的创造性力量。3)参与者之间围绕过程和目标的紧张关系，一旦得到承认，可能是有成效的；这些紧张关系可以作为一种共同行动，产生集体关注，创造一个富有感情的社区。和平节创意响应了原和平论坛参与者的呼吁，明确纳入这些经验教训，并引入具有独特冲突和建设和平经验的新参与者。因此，致力于实现变革的与会者表示，必须有更广泛的对话、交流和思考空间，以产生可操作的知识和创造性的专门技能，鉴于他们所处的复杂现实，这些知识和创造技能将使他们的做法重新焕发活力。他们还强调，必须设法与团结和知识网络中的其他行为者建立联系，以产生协同增效作用，以增加其影响。因此，后续艺术节巩固了所产生的成果，并为知识转移和更广泛的影响开辟了新的空间。该项目有来自古巴和尼加拉瓜的新参与者参与，以产生新的合作途径，大大扩大原项目的影响。纳入这两个国家将进一步加强以前与伙伴组织的合作联系，并建设能力，将它们纳入未来项目的研究网络。和平创意节以第一届和平论坛的调查结果为基础，以便与参与拉丁美洲建设和平努力的现有和新伙伴产生新的和更大的影响。为此，我们将：a)组织和促进四国活动家参加的为期四天的创意和平节活动，应用微调的方法，创造一个与古巴社区经验进行现场交流的空间。b)与现有的团体和倡议(秘鲁/哥伦比亚)重新建立联系，并伴随他们反思经验教训和变革的过程，以制作材料在和平节上分享。与邀请参加艺术节的新举措建立联系(尼加拉瓜/古巴)。c)促进在参与者、非学术和学术行为者之间建立一个知识生产、交流和转让的跨国家网络。d)设计可公开获取的材料，详细说明如何利用最初项目的经验教训和发现。e)在艺术节期间与参与者共同制作文物和短片，将在英国的一个公开展览上提供，并存放在开放获取的档案中。

Our Peace Festival project (PF) identified outstanding groups and initiatives that amplify the voices of marginalized peoples that challenge official histories in Peru and Colombia. It successfully facilitated the gathering of peace activists from these groups in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, to discuss and produce art about the ways they use creative methodologies to tell stories about conflict and violence, their methodological challenges and possibilities, and the alternative narratives that subvert established accounts. Such creative spaces for dialogue and reflection contribute effectively to inclusive democracy and sustainable peace.We produced a multi-authored article on the theoretical and methodological lessons of this novel approach to working with peace activists, currently under review for publication. A second paper, examining the achievements of creative methodologies, was presented at the Latin American Studies Association congress in Barcelona, May 2018.In the follow-up Creativity for Peace Festival, we plan to expand the creative spaces further across academia and activist communities, building on three key insights of the original PF for other co-production initiatives across academic disciplines and with community based organisations:1) That sharing and co-producing knowledge is enhanced by the embodiment created by active engagement with emotions.2) There is a creative force inherent in embracing participants' own goals and strategies.3) Tensions between participants around process and goals, once acknowledged, can be productive; these tensions can serve as a common act producing a collective focus on creating an affective community.The Creativity for Peace Festival responds to participants' calls in the original PF to explicitly incorporate these lessons and bring in new participants with distinctive experiences of conflict and peacebuilding. Thus, participants working to effect change expressed the necessity of broader spaces for dialogue, exchange, and reflection to produce actionable knowledge and creative know-how that reinvigorates their practices given the complex realities in which they operate. They also stressed the need to find ways to connect with other actors in networks of solidarity and knowledge that create synergies to increase their impact. Thus, the follow-on Festival consolidates what was produced and opens new spaces for knowledge transfer and wider impact. This project involves new participants from Cuba and Nicaragua to generate new pathways for collaborative engagement that greatly widen the impact of the original project. Including these two countries will further strengthen previous collaborative links with partner organisations, and build capacity for incorporating them into a research network for future projects. The Creativity for Peace Festival builds on the findings of the first PF in order to achieve new and expanded impact with existing and new partners involved in peacebuilding efforts in Latin America. For this, we will:a) Organise and facilitate the Creativity for Peace Festival as a four-day event with activists from the four countries, apply the fine-tuned methodology and create a space for exchange in-situ with community-based experiences in Cuba.b) Re-connect with existing groups and initiatives (Peru/Colombia) and accompany their process of reflection on lessons and changes to produce materials to be shared in the Festival. Connect with new initiatives invited to the Festival (Nicaragua/Cuba).c) Facilitate the building of a trans-national network of knowledge production, exchange and transfer between participants, non-academic and academic actors.d) Design publicly accessible material detailing how to use the lessons and findings from the original project.e) Co-produce artefacts and a short-film with participants during the Festival that will be made available in a public exhibition in UK and deposited in an open-access archive.