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

我们的和平节项目（PF）确定了杰出的团体和倡议，这些团体和倡议扩大了挑战秘鲁和哥伦比亚官方历史的边缘化人民的声音。它成功地促进了这些团体的和平活动家在哥伦比亚卡塔赫纳德印第亚斯的聚会，讨论和制作艺术品，展示他们如何使用创造性方法讲述冲突和暴力的故事，他们在方法上的挑战和可能性，以及颠覆既定叙述的替代叙述。这种对话和反思的创造性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，介绍了这种与和平活动家合作的新方法的理论和方法论教训，目前正在审查出版。第二篇论文，研究创造性方法的成就，在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。在后续的创造性和平节中，我们计划在学术界和活动家社区进一步扩大创造性空间，建立在原始PF的三个关键见解基础上，用于跨学科和社区组织的其他联合生产计划：1）通过积极参与情感创造的具体化来增强知识的共享和共同生产。2）在拥抱参与者自己的目标和策略时存在固有的创造力。3）参与者之间围绕过程和目标的紧张关系一旦得到承认，就可以产生生产力;这些紧张关系可以作为一种共同的行为，产生一种集体关注，创造一个情感社区。和平创意节响应了参与者在最初的PF中的呼吁明确纳入这些经验教训，并吸收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，鉴于他们所处的复杂现实，有必要扩大对话、交流和反思的空间，以产生可付诸行动的知识和创造性的专门技能，重振他们的做法。他们还强调，需要找到与团结和知识网络中的其他行为者建立联系的方法，以产生协同作用，以增加其影响力。因此，后续的节日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。该项目涉及来自古巴和尼加拉瓜的新参与者，以开辟新的合作参与途径，大大扩大原项目的影响。这两个国家的加入将进一步加强与合作伙伴组织的合作关系，并建立将其纳入未来项目研究网络的能力。和平创意节以第一届和平论坛的成果为基础，以便对参与拉丁美洲建设和平努力的现有和新的合作伙伴产生新的和扩大的影响。为此，我们将：a）组织和促进和平创意节，这是一个为期四天的活动，来自四个国家的活动家参加，采用经过调整的方法，并创造一个空间，与古巴社区的经验进行现场交流。B）与现有团体和倡议（秘鲁/哥伦比亚）重新建立联系，并伴随他们对经验教训和变化的反思过程，以制作供节日分享的材料。与邀请参加电影节的新举措联系起来（c）促进建立参与者之间知识生产、交流和转让的跨国网络，非学术和学术行为者。d）设计可公开访问的材料，详细说明如何使用原始项目的经验教训和发现。e）共同制作文物和短片在电影节期间与参与者一起拍摄的电影将在英国的一个公开展览中展出，并存放在一个开放获取的档案馆中。

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.