The arts offer peacebuilders unique tools for transforming intractable interpersonal, intercommunal, national, and global conflicts-tools that are not currently prevalent or available within the peacebuilding field. The task for peacebuilding practitioners is to find strategic ways of incorporating the arts into the work of peacebuilding and to create a space where people in conflict can express themselves, heal themselves, and reconcile themselves through the arts. There is very little solid theory, research, or evaluation of arts-based peacebuilding. This article seeks to move beyond a simplistic approach that asserts the "arts are powerful" to a richer articulation of how they function in peacebuilding, when to use them, what they can do, and how to evaluate their usage. This article provides examples of and the conceptual frameworks behind strategic arts-based peacebuilding.PEACE & CHANGE / April 2008 (within an already "soft" field) to the "hard" issues of conflict and violence, or because peacebuilding practitioners frequently originate from social and political sciences rather than the arts and humanities fields, or because the methodologies are not readily available. Conversely, within the artistic community, many artists feel that their art needs no sociopolitical or sociocultural explanation, no explicit reason for existence. Art is for art's sake, the saying goes, and any attempt to make it political and/or transformative for the community betrays the self-expressive nature of art.Why encourage an explicit convergence of the arts and peacebuilding fields? The arts have been used for centuries to communicate the human experience in ways that have sometimes nurtured peace and other times fostered violence. While art is not purely functional, it can serve social functions. Art is a tool that can communicate and transform the way people think and act. Arts can change the dynamics in intractable interpersonal, intercommunal, national, and global conflicts.Since the peacebuilding field requires tools that are as diverse and complicated as the human spirit, the arts emerge as a logical ally. The task for peacebuilding practitioners is to find ways of incorporating the arts into the work of peacebuilding and to create a space where people in conflict can express themselves, heal, and reconcile themselves through the arts. This article provides examples of and the conceptual frameworks behind strategic arts-based peacebuilding.By strategic , the authors mean that arts-based methodologies be conceptually grounded, coordinated with other forms of peacebuilding approaches, infused with a long-term perspective vis-à-vis the nature of social change, and serious about evaluating their effectiveness and impact. While peacebuilding processes in general are critiqued for their lack of strategy, arts-based peacebuilding seems to fail to meet these criteria even more frequently. A strategic approach to arts-based peacebuilding can make the difference between a feel-good attempt at using the arts to address conflict and an...
