Using Cultural Resources for Peace

Did you know that cultural initiatives have the power to bridge conflict and nurture positive peace?

Please join us on a journey that will introduce you to the role of culture as a transformational peace player

More information on content and schedule here

We harness this potential by using fine and performing arts, popular culture, heritage, literature or films to create dialogue and peaceful co-existence in communities ravaged by war or those on the precipice of conflict. Through culture, we can cultivate the pillars of peace: diversity, resilience, social cohesion and tolerance. By using culture, we can counter extremist narratives, polarisation and tensions over identities and control of resources that often block the path to peace.

We will offer a series of four workshops with the aim of developing five community-needed projects in conflict and post-conflict locations, including Iraq, Bangladesh, and Poland.

The workshops will be supported by Rotary Peace Fellows, working group founders and coordinators of this area, Natalia Sineaeva-Pankowska and Dr Matthew Johnsen, as well as Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala, the director of the Makerere University Rotary Peace Center in Kampala.

They and several other members of the planning team with experience in program design and implementation will help guide the Rotary community through the culture for peace process, exploring new ideas and visions that celebrate culture as an agent of positive peace.

We will utilize a variety of cultural resources in different contexts to build sustainable peace processes. The projects will deploy a multidimensional cultural approach towards capacity-building and empowering co-existence and reconciliation of local communities.

Project 1. In Iraq, we will amplify culture and education as agents of recovery and reintegration by orchestrating peace through arts resonant centres in the province Neineva. The project will empower education and training to proactively prevent the process of radicalization and related tensions. Its outreach will include youth, children, young women, minorities and professionals.

Projects 2, 3 and 4. In Bangladesh, we will amplify culture and education as agents of peace in Rangpur and Chittagong divisions to help reconcile warring communities and enhance peaceful co-existence between different religious and ethnic groups. Our area of focus will be the Cox’s Bazaar, inhabited by Rohingya refugees, where we will work to strengthen the confidence and capabilities of women and children so that they can overcome the great challenges they face.

Project 5. In Poland, we will amplify culture and education as agents of diversity and inclusion by promoting tolerance and respect towards migrant, refugee and minority communities. This will also enhance harmony and understanding between various groups at the wave of growing xenophobia and hate. The project will utilise the resources of the Pol’and’Rock Festival (formerly Woodstock), which takes place in Kostrzyn near the Polish-German border. The festival is the largest in Europe, and it was named after the legendary Festival of 1969, which featured Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin and positioned cultural history as a symbol of the peace movement.

These projects will strive to use emerging technologies appropriate to engaging the addressed communities in the post-pandemic world.

Partner Organisations