Together with the Office of Cultural Affairs of the Central Bank of Colombia, IMPACT has supported capacity-building among grassroots arts and peacebuilding organizations in Colombia. This involved gathering human and financial resources to organize training in project development, documentation, and fundraising for 16 grassroots organizations working in the ACCT field throughout Colombia. Through training delivered
In 2020, IMPACT provided support to the Cyprus-based Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival. We co-designed and launched a “Thinking Partners” initiative matching colleagues from diverse locations and areas of expertise with the artists who were creating new works for the Buffer Fringe. This served to generate critical discussions around the artistic practice itself and the
Acclaimed Senegalese women writers like Mariama Bâ, Ken Bugul, and Fatou Diome have contributed to liberating literary production by encouraging further innovations into stories that subvert oppressive gendered expectations and norms. In the contemporary moment, however, while gender parity dominates Senegal’s political discourse, women writers are less visible than their male counterparts. Women are often
IMPACT partnered with Bangalore Creative Circus, and Harsha Bhamdipati, Brandeis graduate student, to work with local artists from Bangalore, India, on a design a walking tour and nurturing a space for discussion on the issues of justice and inequity in access to safe water in Bangalore. The Walking Tour engaged community members from different walks
Building on the knowledge of Acting Together, IMPACT is developing a novel toolkit that illustrates how systems and complexity theories can and do inform arts- and culture-based works. The idea is to strengthen insights from conflict transformation in designing, implementing, assessing and advocating for arts-based peacebuilding work. The tool will be tested out with a
A global research initiative supported by the Community Arts Network of the Porticus Foundation. Based on analyses of the alignment between aesthetic practices and complexity/systems theory, this report offers a nuanced case for 1) an increase in resources made available to the arts, culture and conflict transformation ecosystem; and 2) a stronger alignment between philanthropic
There is a high degree of interconnectedness within the network of arts, culture, and conflict transformation (ACCT). Nonetheless, through formal and informal collaboration, IMPACT intends to create an advocacy platform for the field and ecosystem; foster connections to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, contacts, resources, and ideas; and build the the capacity of art and
In 2019, IMPACT convened a gathering of philanthropic professionals, researchers and peacebuilding/arts practitioners to sketch out plans for an advocacy arm for the arts, culture and conflict transformation field. Following this convening, we came to understand the ACCT ecosystem to be the loose global network of organizations and individuals working with art and culture in
The documentary Acting Together on the World Stage was produced by the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University. The documentary explores how divided communities in more than a dozen conflict regions across the globe draw on the power of performance to transform conflict. Now, IMPACT is organizing screenings of the film with
IMPACT has engaged with key players in related fields, including human rights, transitional justice, environmental justice, sustainable development, arts education, etc., to enhance the visibility of and support for creative approaches to work in their areas. For instance, we at IMPACT have been working with UNESCO’s Art Lab for Human Rights and Dialogue , conducting
IMPACT has been organizing global, facilitated online “conversations” in writing that are hosted at Platform4Dialogue virtual space run by Peace Direct. Since 2018, over 2,000 people from various regions of the globe have engaged in learning exchanges in English, Spanish and French that take place over 24 hours. They have focused on issues such as
IMPACT contributes to an annual training on arts and peacebuilding led by the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute to unpack the transformative and generative power of the arts in bringing about positive change and disrupting cycles of violence.