YOUTH PROMOTING PEACE

THROUGH ARTS, CULTURE AND TOURISM

2nd

ANNUAL GLOBAL PEACE WORKSHOP

Monday 23rd

– Friday 27th

June 2014 in Muğla, Turkey

In this second annual Global Peace Workshop we explore the role of young people in promoting

peace through arts, culture and tourism. Culture is a vital instrument in building peace, helping us to

understand ourselves, our values and traditions in relation to others near and far. In today’s

increasingly connected world, where we are able to cut across boundaries and interact with others

with unprecedented ease, the opportunities for cultural exchange have never been so vast.

And it is often the young who make the most of these opportunities, travelling to other countries for

work, study and tourism, and building relationships across difference at home and online.

Increased cultural exchange can help us to foster mutual understanding and manage change, yet

much of the potential of culture for building peace goes untapped. The Global Peace Workshop

welcomes people from all countries to come together to explore the challenges and opportunities

facing young people in building a culture of peace. Introduced by high-profile keynotes speakers,

the workshop provides participants with the opportunity to explore one of five workshop themes (as

below). This year we also introduce masterclasses for participants, helping to hone core skills

related to advocacy, peacebuilding, development and foreign relations.

Organised by the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University in the UK,

Muğla Sıtkı Koçman Üniversitesi in Turkey and CESRAN International, the workshop brings

together practitioners, academics and students of peace and conflict from institutions worldwide.

If you have a strong background in social activism or engagement in public life, for instance

through volunteering or being a member of a movement, and especially if you have experience

working in a conflict-affected society or working with youth, then this workshop is for you.

1. Connecting communities through theatre, poetry and the spoken word

A new generation of performers and activists are using theatre, poetry and the spoken word to speak

out against hatred and violence. Innovative new mediums, such as street theatre and Theatre for the

Oppressed, provide the means for people to resist domination and foster democratic or collaborative

forms of interaction. For societies in or emerging from conflict, the performative arts provide

audiences with the opportunity to explore challenging and sensitive themes and allow the

performers space for creative expression. Within development, performance is credited with a wide

spectrum of social outcomes, including community empowerment, raising awareness and

connecting citizens with wider social or advocacy movements. Within peacebuilding, performance

is used in areas such as the psycho-social treatment of child soldiers, trauma healing and

reconciliation.

What is it that makes community-based performance work such an effective form of intervention in

peacebuilding and conflict transformation? By holding a mirror up to society, performers are able to

open up multiple perspectives to an audience, creating empathy and understanding where

previously there was none. They can provoke debate and present alternative perspectives. In this

workshop we introduce and experiment with some of the methods used by performers in conflict

and post-conflict communities, investigating the utility of these techniques for providing social

commentary and action and in creating and critiquing social and political narratives.

2. Cultural diplomacy and dialogue – where next?

We live in a world with unprecedented levels of people-to-people cultural contact, powered in part

by the internet, migration and tourism. Perhaps more than ever before, culture has a role to play in

shaping relations between countries, their governments and populations. Yet while rising power and

emerging economy countries are rapidly increasing their expenditure on cultural relations,

traditional actors in this field are in retreat. Favouring measurable impact and short term results, and

facing tough financial decisions, are Western governments now underestimating the importance of

cultural exchange?

In this workshop we consider how cultural diplomacy is being redefined in a world where shifts in

the global configuration of power are impacting on global governance and values, and where

culture is simultaneously becoming more easily accessible, democratised and commercialised. What

is the impact of this new cultural era, where hours of video are uploaded onto YouTube every

minute to be enjoyed by an audience of over 1 billion? Are new forms of communication and

interaction making us increasingly culturally literate, the curators of our own cultural lives, or does

ready access to cultural content make us lazy in our consumption? Are we interacting across

difference, or do we stick to what’s familiar?

3. Safeguarding culture

Our cultural heritage helps us to form our identities. It underpins our narratives about our ancestors

and allows us to draw lessons about how we, as the current generation, might decide to organise

ourselves and our values. In times of conflict the preservation of heritage can help to rebuild broken

communities. Yet whether by accident or design, it is often damaged or destroyed during fighting.

Valuable items are looted from museums, soon to be sold in the auction houses of Paris and

London. Intangible forms of heritage, including songs, stories and skills, can come under pressure

from political opponents, or struggle to be maintained in times of conflict and confusion.

It is the young who stand to inherit the cultural treasures of the world, and it is they who will be

charged with preserving it for generations to come. In times of conflict or crisis, young people have

stepped in to protect cultural artefacts under threat. During the 2011 demonstrations in Egypt, the

young people safeguarded their cultural heritage by spontaneously forming a human chain around

the Library of Alexandria, protecting it from looters. Here we consider the growing role of young

people in safeguarding heritage and ask how they can be equipped to meet the challenges of today.

4. Travelling and tourism during and after conflict

20% of international tourists are young people and youth travel generates in excess of US$185

billion in international tourism receipts a year. Young travellers are tend to be more

environmentally-aware, stay longer and interact more closely with the communities they visit. They

are early adopters of the new technologies redefining travel and they are less likely to be put off by

economic problems, political and civil unrest, disease or natural disasters. A new generation of

travellers, increasingly from emerging economy countries, are showing that when the going gets

tough, the young keep travelling. And for some travel can become a more permanent arrangement -

youth now account for one third of all international migrants.

For young people travel can be a way of connecting with

other cultures and a means of career and self-

development. But what is the impact of their visits on

host countries emerging from conflict? We often hear

that tourism is the world’s peace industry, but does it really create peace or just benefit from it, or

can it even be a hindrance? In this workshop, we examine the impacts of tourism and other forms of

travel. In our host country of Turkey, the sixth most visited country in the world, we come together

to consider the dilemmas of travel to conflict zones, asking: are young travellers, tourists and

migrants the peace ambassadors of today?

5. Picturing others: portraying conflict through fine art and photography

Visual arts can play a crucial role in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Whether they are

photographs or artistic representations, pictures have the power to give voice to our emotions and

experiences. But while images can certainly speak through their muteness, what do they say? They

can bear witness to our tragedies and provide the means for us to remember, and they can arouse

concern or compassion, challenging us to take action. Yet they can also cause division and harm.

Images of tragedy can injure their subjects afresh. The devastated, the damaged and the

dispossessed can be rendered powerless once again by the photographer’s depiction of their plight.

How we represent others through our imagery matters.

And in a world where most of us now have the means to

capture images of conflict, we urgently need to develop

our understanding of the power and ethics of depiction.

In this workshop we draw together theoretical insights

and practitioner perspectives to consider the changing

terrain of visual storytelling today, in a world increasing

characterised by crowd-sourced new media. What

determines whether a photo is activism or agitprop? Are

we all citizen journalists now? Could this lead to a

widening of perspectives? And how does it reshape the

political economy of visual media production and

consumption?

Travel is the language of peace.

Mahatma Gandhi

“A sceptical generation stands at

the threshold of adulthood, bereft

not of ideals but of certainties,

indeed distrustful of the grand

revealed truth: disposed instead to

accept the small truths, changeable

from month to month on the

convulsed wave of cultural

fashions, whether guided or wild”.

Primo Levi

The Drowned and the Saved