Do you know how art affects peacebuilding?

"Wow!" - the word that accompanied all four days of the workshop "Cereating Peace Through Art" in Odesa. Words of amazement describe the opportunity, that each participant of the event has in joining the peacebuilding in a completely new way – artistic.

During the event, trainers made efforts to create a safe and creative environment for working with the topic of peacebuilding and practical exercises, which, at first sight, seemed quite difficult to participants. Some of them reflected during feedback sessions that they had some fears about how they would be able to work on the animation and who would prepare the exhibition that was planned in the training program. By the way, some participants said that local Odesa artists would be invited or a tour of the gallery of contemporary art would be organized.

So how did our participants overcome this challenge?

It turned out that a clear time management, or rather its limitation, contributed to the complete immersion of the group. There was no time for doubt and despair, because the interaction of participants increased each one's fficiency.  Here, the key to success was the ability of trainers to clearly determine the amount of time to perform practical tasks. Participants simply had no time for doubts and fears that arose in them before the workshop.

An important component of the workshop "Cereating Peace Through Art" was also a theoretical component on the basics of understanding the concept of a conflict. This block was quite live and opened up new perspectives on the conflict. During the discussion, own stories were offered as training cases. For example, Anna, one of the participants in the workshop, pointed out that this block attracted her attention, because the skills of establishing effective interaction and constructive behaviour in a conflict were especially relevant to her.

One of the atypical conclusions was the idea that people in their small communities are not used to talking about painful and conflicting topics, an such behavior does not serve to change or solve the current situation, but sometimes worsens it.

The peculiarity of this very workshop was that participants drew parallels from theoretical knowledge to practical exercises, and formed their own understanding of how they can make cultural thematic interventions and build a dialogue with the audience on relevant topics in society, thereby building peace at the community level.

The event was held in the frames of the "Peace Building and Conflict Resolution in Ukraine – Step Forward" project, implemented with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office’s funds by IFA (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Funding programme zivik.