✅ How can creative approaches to complex problems be more impactful?

✅ How can we, as arts- and culture-based peacebuilders, be more strategic in harnessing our limited resources?

✅ How can we learn to make sense of the intersecting layers of the complex realities that are present in our communities and in our world?

IMPACT invites you to grapple with these questions in a series of participatory workshops, where we can be introduced to main approaches to systems theory and support each other to apply them to our own practices. 

We will ;

🔹 Listen to compelling stories from leading systems thinkers who work in the peacebuilding field 

🔹 Distill the key elements of their approaches, and 

🔹 Meet in small groups to think through the implications for our own practice

🔹 Share emerging insights and questions

Stories of interventions based on systems thinking with leading practitioners. 

We are planning a series of three events. 

Session 3:

📅 June 26, 12:00-1:45 pm EST | 6:00-7:45 pm CET with Gaviota Acevedo Espinosa, peacebuilder and musician from Colombia’s South Pacific, where she works with Afro-Colombian communities to blend ancestral music with systems thinking for peace, and Polly Walker (IMPACT Senior Fellow)

Check Session 3 Agenda

Check Session 3 Report

🎬 Watch session 3 recording

Session 2:

📅 May 15, 4 PM EDT | 8 AM NZST (+1) with Scot Nakagawa (22nd Century Initiative) and Julia Roig (Horizons Project)

Check Session 2 Agenda

Check Session 2 Agenda

Check Session 2 Report

🎬 Watch session 2 recording

Session 1:

📅 April 14, 6 pm CET | 12 pm ET with Dr. Benjamin Broome and Dr. Polly Walker (IMPACT Senior Fellow)

Check Session 1 Agenda

Check Session 1 Report

Speakers

Gaviota Acevedo Espinosa is a political scientist, singer, and peacebuilding practitioner with a Master’s degree in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford in the UK, where she studied as a Chevening Scholar. She brings over a decade of experience in conflict transformation, Read More

and community-based work. At Marimbea, a cultural organization that collaborates with Afro-Colombian communities in Colombia’s South Pacific region, she has led the design and facilitation of processes that weave together traditional music, collective memory, and systems thinking. Drawing from her own journey as a vocalist and peacebuilder, Gaviota helps communities make sense of complex realities by mapping patterns of exclusion and co-creating cultural strategies that foster identity, resilience, and peace. Through participatory tools and systems mapping, she supports local leaders and artists in identifying leverage points for transformation and reimagining their territories as living, interconnected systems of possibility.

Scot Nakagawa is a 42-year veteran of social and economic justice advocacy and has served as an organizer, political strategist, and social movement analyst in the struggle against authoritarianism and for equitable and inclusive democracy since 1988. He has worked with organizations Read More

such as the Coalition for Human Dignity, the National Anti-Klan Network, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Highlander Research and Education Center, and numerous political campaigns to limit the power and influence of racist, antisemitic, patriarchal, and religious fundamentalist leaders and groups.Scot is also the co-founder and past Senior Partner of ChangeLab, an Asian American think/act laboratory addressing issues of social justice and Asian American leadership, work that was recognized by the Association of Asian American Studies, Community Leader Award. He is a past Open Society Foundations fellow, and Senior Fellow on Nationalism, Authoritarianism, and Race of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation. He is a writer whose essays on authoritarianism and resistance can be found online in The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook on Substack.

Benjamin Broome, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, held the position of Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University (ASU) from 1999-2024. His work focuses on developing ways to help groups, organizations, and communities Read More

respond to conflict through dialogue rather than violence. He believes that to meaningfully address the increasingly complex and contentious issues facing our contemporary world we must engage stakeholders in collective design processes that foster both diversity of perspectives and strength of connections. Over the past thirty years, Professor Broome has facilitated design workshops in North America, Europe, and the eastern Mediterranean, working with educational institutions, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, government entities, and indigenous nations and communities. He has published books, journal articles, and book chapters on a variety of topics, including the application of interactive design processes to promote peace in ethnic conflicts; building a culture of peace through intergroup dialogue; understanding relational empathy and its role in transforming intercultural conflict; developing a collective vision of the future in divided societies; and challenges and promises of the third-party role in intractable conflicts. His publications have appeared in Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Peace Research, International Negotiation, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Management Communication Quarterly, Human Communication Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Social Psychology, International Journal of Conflict Management, Small Group Research, American Indian Quarterly, Communication Education, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, and in several Handbooks, Encyclopedias, and other edited volumes.

discussants

Polly Walker is of Cherokee ancestry and a member of the Cherokee Southwest Township. She is Associate Professor Emeritus, Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College. Polly earned her PhD at Australia’s University of Queensland where her research focused on conflict transformation between Read More

Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australians. Polly is co-editor of the two-volume “Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict”. She also contributed to the documentary “Acting Together on the World Stage,” and is co-author of the accompanying toolkit. She was a director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute of Australia. Polly serves as Chair of the Indigenous Education Institute whose work supports ethical collaboration with Indigenous peoples and Western scientists supporting the revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems.

Julia Roig, Founder & Chief Network Weaver of the Horizons Project, brings over 30 years of global experience in democratic change and conflict transformation. Formerly President and CEO of PartnersGlobal for 14 years, she launched the Horizons Project in 2022 to focus on peacebuilding Read More

, social justice, and democracy in the US. Julia pioneers innovative research on Narratives for Peace, collaborating with philanthropists, nonprofits, and movement leaders to integrate narrative competency for societal reconciliation and democratic values. With extensive fieldwork spanning 50+ countries, including roles such as Country Director in Serbia and expertise in community justice in Colombia, she also serves as a trustee for organizations like the Othering & Belonging Institute and the Alliance for Peacebuilding.

Polly Walker is of Cherokee ancestry and a member of the Cherokee Southwest Township. She is Associate Professor Emeritus, Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College. Polly earned her PhD at Australia’s University of Queensland where her research focused on Read More

conflict transformation between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australians. Polly is co-editor of the two-volume “Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict”. She also contributed to the documentary “Acting Together on the World Stage,” and is co-author of the accompanying toolkit. She was a director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute of Australia. Polly serves as Chair of the Indigenous Education Institute whose work supports ethical collaboration with Indigenous peoples and Western scientists supporting the revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems.