The Creating Safer Space network is excited to be part of the UCP/A Community of Practice, which brings together people and organisations around the world that are practicing, researching and promoting Unarmed Civilian Protection and Accompaniment. We are delighted that Prof. Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Creating Safer Space Principal Investigator, has become a member of the UCP/A Community of Practice Steering Group.

The UCP/A Community of Practice, with support from Creating Safer Space, has recently published a Report on its last international gathering, which took place in Geneva in October 2023. The report is available in English, Spanish and French.

The Creating Safer Space network has shown a series of films as part of the WOW Wales One World Film Festival, and these are still available to view online.

The WOW Film Festival is the only UK festival dedicated principally to films from Africa, Asia & Latin America, and this is its 23rd year of bringing international films to cinemas across Wales.

This year the WOW Film Festival included 9 short films that have been produced as part of Creating Safer Space research projects in Colombia, Nigeria and Palestine.

The films were shown in Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales. Two of the sessions included discussions with the Principal Investigators of the projects that created two of the films, Dr Marwan Darweish for Civil protection to stay on our land (Palestine) and Dr Pier Parisi for Survive among violence: Stories of the Nasa people in Colombia. More information about the films here.

The films and recordings of the discussions are being shown online until 31 May – book here with free admission!

The Creating Safer Space Exhibition was on display in Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Wales from 11 – 28 March.

Two students from the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University worked as Exhibition Tour Guides. Emily Pomeroy is a first year PhD student, and Konstantinos Kolokotronis is a Master’s student. They provided tours to groups of university students and members of the public. A diverse range of visitors viewed the exhibition, and were moved by the stories and the artwork. Most heard about unarmed civilian protection for the first time.

A special exhibition event, attended by approximately 80 people, was held on the evening of Friday 22 March, with wine, food and live music. In her opening remarks, Angela Hatton, Aberystwyth University Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research, Knowledge Exchange and Innovation, discussed the importance of the Creating Safer Space network in the context of the increasing need for civilian protection around the world. Patrick Finney, the Head of Department of International Politics, highlighted the Creating Safer Space network’s difficult journey (born during Covid and affected by subsequent funding instability) and the pleasure in now seeing the network’s achievements as part of the exhibition and its contributions to the WOW Film Festival.

The Creating Safer Space project ‘Exploring unarmed civilian self-protection in Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict’ has published a booklet with poetry and drawings, entitled: “Ji se a-nta-av” Resilient Voices: An anthology of poems on community unarmed protection from a war zone, edited by Mutia Brendaline. The poems and drawings are all written and drawn by civilians living amidst the current conflict in the English-speaking North West and South West regions of Cameroon. An introduction is provided by Prof. Gordon Crawford, the Principal Investigator of the project, who highlights how “[t]he poems’ authors (anonymous to protect their security) outline their experiences, hardships and traumas, as well as their courage, resilience and agency in protecting themselves and others against violence.”

The Creating Safer Space project ‘Understanding Community-level Spontaneous Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP): A Comparative Study of Initiatives in South Sudan, Myanmar and Colombia’, has published a policy brief based on their research in Nariño, Colombia, entitled ‘Civilians Protecting Civilians’. The policy brief was launched at an event in London that included the participation of the Ambassador of Colombia to the UK and officials from the UK Foreign Office, who reflected on the recommendations provided. The policy brief was published by Rodeemos el Diálogo and written by Karen Arteaga Garzón and Andrei Gómez-Suárez, with illustrations by Sebastián Bucheli. The policy brief is available in English and Spanish.

The Creating Safer Space network held a three-day final regional research forum in Bangkok, Thailand, from 20 – 22 February 2024. The event was hosted by the Faculty of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University.

The research forum was organized to bring researchers and other stakeholders together to share research findings, unique research methodologies, and implications of the research findings for violence prevention and peacebuilding initiatives.

Each of the 8 Creating Safer Space projects in South-East Asia sent at least two representatives to the event, and the event brought together about 50 participants in total. The participants exchanged research findings and enthusiastically discussed ideas about how to create safer spaces for people living in areas of violent conflict.

Participants were also able to visit the Creating Safer Space exhibition. The exhibition brings together objects, images, and voices to show how civilians around the world harness the power of nonviolence to create safer spaces for a dignified life.

More information about the event will be available on the Creating Safer Space website in due course.

This is the second of our three final events. The final event for Africa and the Middle East took place in Kenya in January and we are now very pleased to share more information about this event on our website, along with recordings from the event. The final event for Latin America will take place in Colombia in June.

The Creating Safer Space project ‘Development of civil protection capacities in women displaced by the armed conflict through popular communication and Community Legal Empowerment’ is holding an event at the La Casona Public Library in Cali, Colombia, at 3.30 pm on Thursday 14 March to disseminate the transmedia booklet developed as part of the research project.

The event will be specifically aimed at women who actively participated in the research. It will be an opportunity to recognize their valuable contribution as agents of change in promoting peaceful civil protection in communities affected by armed conflict. The focal point of the event will be a panel discussion where the participating women will have the opportunity to share their experiences in civil protection and the co-creation process of the booklet. In addition to the delivery to the participants, a donation of some copies of the booklet will be made to the La Casona Public Library. This donation aims to facilitate access to educational materials for all library users, thus contributing to the dissemination of knowledge about civil protection in the community.

The transmedia booklet is available for download here.