The Creating Safer Space project ‘Strategies for Safety and Solidarity: Understanding protection through creativity in South Sudan and Colombia’ has produced a booklet about their research, artmaking and solidarity actions.

Their work invites us to consider how the arts and heritage can contribute to our understanding of safeguarding and survival in a fragile context, but also how protecting the arts could be essential to creating a safer society.

Artists and keepers of cultural traditions from South Sudan, Sudan and Colombia have worked with researchers to investigate the ways we seek out protection and how those strategies for safety are narrated.

The booklet is available here.

The Creating Safer Space network is developing a travelling exhibition, with creative outputs from our projects around the world. A small preview of the exhibition was on display at the International Gathering of Unarmed Civilian Protection and Accompaniment Organisations, which was held in Ferney-Voltaire, France and Geneva, Switzerland from 9-11 October 2023.

The La Fiesta theatre production was performed by Harlequin and the Jugglers at the Pablo Tobón Uribe Theater in Medellín, Colombia, on 17 May 2023. La Fiesta is a piece inspired by the findings of the research project “Art that protects, phase 1: Contributions of artistic-cultural initiatives to the self-protection strategies of young people and women in the context of urban conflict in Medellín, 2022“.

The performance was attended by more than 600 people, including many members of artistic-cultural organizations from vulnerable urban areas in Medellín. La Fiesta underscores the transformative power of art in communities affected by urban violence.

More information about the event is available in English and Spanish. The full recording will soon be available here.

The Creating Safer Space network has organised two Research Cafés to inform researchers about creative research methods, and the benefits of such methods for research on Unarmed Civilian Protection.

Using Textiles as a Research Method

On Thursday 17 March 2022, Prof. Beatriz Arias provided an an introduction to using textiles (embroidering, sewing, and other needlework) as a participatory and creative research method.

Using Drawing as a Research Method

On Thursday 17 February 2022, Prof. Berit Bliesemann de Guevara provided an introduction to ‘Drawing Out’ as a participatory and creative research method.