The Creating Safer Space network has brought together people from 70 organisations in 13 countries to better understand unarmed civilian protection and self-protection amidst violent conflict. As the network draws to a close, join us to find out more about our work, to celebrate our achievements and to look ahead!
Research Findings and Achievements: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Nerve Macaspac, Beatriz Arias and Rachel Julian
Keynote Speech: Rosemary Kabaki, Head of Mission South Sudan, Nonviolent Peaceforce
Highlights from a selection of Creating Safer Space projects around the world
Reflections from the audience
Bring a local drink to celebrate!
Further information about the images on the e-flyer:
Top left: Men in South Sudan illustrating the use of grasses tied together to convey a specific symbolic meaning. When the heads of the grasses are tied together, it symbolises a clash (that there will be fighting). When the heads of the grasses are apart, as the man in the middle demonstrates with his hands, it symbolises that violence will be avoided. Photograph by Haji Elias Hillary as part of the Creating Safer Space project Visualising early warning and preparedness in civilian protection: Investigating local vernaculars of community adaptations to insecurity
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 1: Category Cosmovision – Barrio Comparsa Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 1: Categoría Cosmovisión – Barrio Comparsa
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 2: Category Age – Robledo Venga Parchemos Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 2: Categoria Edad – Robledo Venga Parchemos
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 3: Category Socioeconomic Status – Biocomunidad Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 3: Categoria Estatus Socioeconómico – Biocomunidad
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 4: Category Ethnicity – Arlequín y los Juglares Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 4: Categoría Étnica – Arlequín y los juglares
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 5: Category Sex and Gender – Renovación Art Corporation Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 5: Categoría Sexo y Género – Renovación Corporación Artística
Podcast, Chapter 1: Let’s Change the Toys, Let’s Change the Game Podcast, Capitulo 1: Cambiemos los juguetes, cambiemos la vuelta
Podcast, Chapter 2: Stronger than War Podcast, Capitulo 2: Más fuertes que la Guerra
Podcast, Chapter 3: Connections that Support Podcast, Capitulo 3: Conexiones que sostienen
BACKGROUND (ENGLISH):
After conducting a comprehensive review of the literature on unarmed civil protection and self-protection in 2020, we realized that it was important to understand the contributions that art can make within this field of practice. Therefore, in the first phase of the Art that Protects project, we decided to document the self-protective role of art. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the self-protection strategies developed by grassroots artistic and cultural organizations for children, youth, and women living in neighborhoods of Medellín, where urban conflict has severely impacted these populations.
From the findings of this first phase, we understood that the vulnerabilities experienced by children, youth, and women are not uniform. They are influenced by age, gender, social and economic status, ethnicity, and other categories. Moreover, we identified that thanks to the networks and connections with other collectives, cultural organizations create spaces of self-protection in their neighborhoods. Consequently, the second phase of the research focused on these two aspects.
We created a series of audiovisual materials to disseminate the findings from this second phase. First, through a series of five videos, we analyzed how beliefs, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender can simultaneously act as sources of vulnerability and self-protection, using an intersectional perspective.
In collaboration with Luis Fernando García “El Gordo,” founder and director of Barrio Comparsa, we explored how artistic organizations create images and works rooted in their ethical principles and values, reflecting their members’ stories and responding to the demands of their context. Juan Marcos Díaz, director of Robledo Venga Parchemos, shared insights on how violence in urban conflict contexts affects children and youth differently. For this reason, artistic and cultural organizations offer alternatives that help resist the pressures of armed groups.
The founders of Biocomunidad, Nelson Berdugo and Giovany Caro, highlighted how economic precariousness and informal labor impact many cultural and artistic organizations in the city. Also, they emphasized that the social value of artists transcends their financial circumstances. Ludis Soto Cruz and Óscar Manuel Zuluaga, members of Arlequín y los Juglares, discussed how Afro-descendant and Indigenous populations on the outskirts of Medellín face inequalities due to their ethnic identities. However, these communities express their knowledge and perspectives through art, strengthening their dignity. Diana Torres, Iris Andrea Álvarez, and Ana Milena Nanclares, members of Renovación, demonstrated how everyday power dynamics perpetuate gender stereotypes. Cultural organizations foster spaces for resistance and empowerment, especially for women, through community and artistic participation.
Second, through three podcast episodes, we examined how art has served as a self-protection strategy over the last forty years and as a tool for networking. These networks have enabled grassroots artistic and cultural organizations to enter communities and engage with their residents. In the first episode, Luis Fernando García recounted the tools used by Barrio Comparsa to reclaim public spaces for the residents of Manrique in the 1980s. Members of Ziruma shared how their work has made them stronger than the conflict, using theater to narrate the life and memory of the neighborhood and its people. Finally, the members of Sueños de Papel explained how support networks allowed them to recognize and build upon the work of those who had previously established the neighborhood, connecting with community leaders.
BACKGROUND (SPANISH)
Después de hacer un balance amplio de bibliografía sobre protección civil no armada y autoprotección en el 2020, nos dimos cuenta de que dentro de este campo de práctica es poco lo que se ha estudiado sobre los aportes que puede hacer el arte. Por lo tanto, en una primera fase del proyecto Arte que Protege, decidimos documentar el papel autoprotector del arte. Para alcanzar dicho objetivo analizamos las estrategias de autoprotección desarrolladas por las organizaciones de base artísticas y culturales para niños, niñas, jóvenes y mujeres, que viven en barrios de Medellín donde el conflicto urbano ha estado activo.
A partir de los hallazgos de esa primera fase, nos dimos cuenta de que las vulneraciones perpetradas a niños, niñas, jóvenes y mujeres no se experimentan de la misma manera, sino que también obedecen a su edad, género, estatus social y económico, etnia y otras categorías. Además, entendimos que una de las razones por las cuales las organizaciones artísticas y culturales construyen espacios de autoprotección en sus barrios, es gracias a la red de alianzas y redes que establecen con otras organizaciones. En consecuencia, la segunda fase de la investigación se preocupó por estos dos temas.
Para dar a conocer los hallazgos encontrados en esta segunda fase decidimos desarrollar una serie de materiales audiovisuales. En primer lugar, a través de una serie de cinco vídeos analizamos desde la perspectiva interseccional la forma en la que las creencias, la edad, la etnia, el estatus socioeconómico y el género, pueden tener un carácter vulnerador y autoprotector. Con Luis Fernando García “El Gordo”, director fundador de Barrio Comparsa, vemos cómo las organizaciones artísticas crean imágenes y obras basadas en sus principios éticos y valores, reflejando las historias de sus miembros y respondiendo las demandas del contexto. Juan Marcos Díaz, director de Robledo Venga Parchemos, nos relata cómo la violencia en contextos de conflicto urbano afecta de manera diferente a niños, niñas y jóvenes. Por ello las organizaciones artísticas y culturales ofrecen alternativas que ayudan a resistir las presiones de los grupos armados.
Los fundadores de Biocomunidad, Nelson Berdugo y Giovany Caro, evidencian que la precariedad económica y la informalidad laboral afectan a muchas organizaciones culturales y artísticas en la ciudad, pero que la valoración social de los artistas va más allá de su situación económica. Ludis Soto Cruz y Óscar Manuel Zuluaga, integrantes de Arlequín y los Juglares hablan de cómo las poblaciones afrodescendientes e indígenas de las periferias de Medellín enfrentan desigualdades debido a su identidad étnica, pero las iniciativas artísticas les permiten expresar sus conocimientos y perspectivas, fortaleciendo su dignidad. Diana Torres, Iris Andrea Álvarez y Ana Milena Nanclares, integrantes de Renovación, demuestran que las dinámicas de poder cotidianas perpetúan estereotipos de género. No obstante, en las organizaciones culturales, las mujeres propician espacios de resistencia y empoderamiento en la participación comunitaria y artística.
En segundo lugar, a través de tres episodios de un podcast analizamos cómo en los últimos cuarenta años el arte ha servido como estrategia de autoprotección. Además, se analiza la forma en la que el trabajo en red le permitió a las organizaciones artísticas y culturales de base comunitaria entrar en los territorios y articularse con sus habitantes. En el primer episodio Luis Fernando García narra las herramientas que utilizó la organización que fundó, Barrio Comparsa, para recuperar la calle para los habitantes de Manrique en la década de 1980. Los integrantes de Ziruma evidencian que su trabajo los ha hecho más fuertes que la guerra. Ellos han utilizado el teatro para contar la vida y la memoria del barrio y sus habitantes. Por último, las integrantes de sueños de papel sostienen que las redes de apoyo les permitieron reconocer todo el trabajo que ya habían hecho quienes habían construido el barrio. Ellas se articularon con los líderes comunitarios.
Photo Embroidery Exhibition: Let the Rivers Be for Life!
The exhibition “Let the Rivers Be for Life! Community Self-Protection and Care” represents a significant outcome of the research project “Water Conflicts, Violations, and Forms of Self-Protection: A Multi-Case Study in Eastern Antioquia, Colombia, Phase 2”. This unique exhibition delves into the strategies of self-protection employed by communities in response to conflicts impacting the Paloma, Dormilón, and Santo Domingo rivers, located in the municipalities of Argelia, San Luis, and San Francisco, respectively.
Community from Argelia, Antioquia, at the exhibition
Through the collaborative arts of photography and embroidery, residents of these “hydrosocial” territories narrate the challenges they face. These include the arrival of small hydroelectric plants, mining activities, mass tourism, pressure from riverside real estate development, deforestation, and pollution. Yet, alongside these stories of struggle, they reveal how they have nonviolently protected themselves against these threats: through the weaving of community bonds, water stewardship, and a steadfast commitment to the peasant heritage of their lands.
Research team with exhibition in Argelia, Antioquia
The exhibition was showcased in October across the three municipalities involved in the study. This provided a space for the research team to share their findings with the communities who participated in the photography and embroidery exercises. Attendees underscored the essential role of water as the lifeblood of their territories. Although Eastern Antioquia has become a key hydroelectric resource for Colombia due to its abundant waterways, the communities pledged to continue their fight for a dignified life, enabling them to stay on their land and preserve their peasant traditions.
United defending the territory 1 Location: Argelia, Antioquia Photo by: Anyi Lorena Ocampo Embroidered by: Beatriz Arias Date: April 2024
United defending the territory 2 Location: Argelia, Antioquia Photo by: Anyi Lorena Ocampo Embroidered by: Anyi Lorena Ocampo Aguirre and Alfredo Galeano Date: April 2024
New Creating Safer Space Working Paper on Colombia
The working paper is currently only available in Spanish, but an English translation will be available soon.
The working paper presents the findings of the Creating Safer Space project, Art that Protects: Networks as strategies for self-protection in the context of urban conflict in the city of Medellín, 2023. It explores the role of art as a powerful form of self-protection in the context of social and armed conflict in Medellín, Colombia. Using an intersectional lens, it analyses the initiatives of fifteen community-based artistic and cultural organizations that have worked in the context of this urban conflict. By unpacking the categories of sex-gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, and cosmovision in the art that protects, the authors contribute to a deeper understanding, among others, of the role of marginalized people in their communities’ safety; the socioeconomic precarity of community-based artistic organisations; the role of art in creating spaces for reflection of hidden, naturalised violences such as structural racism; and the importance of youth initiatives.
We welcome proposals for the Creating Safer Space Working Paper Series. Please contact creating-safer-space@aber.ac.uk if you are interested in publishing a working paper with us.
Creating Safer Space Research Café: UCP and Abolition
At the next Creating Safer Space Research Café, we will discuss the idea of abolition, how this debate may be linked to UCP, and potential avenues for future collaboration between abolition researchers and UCP researchers.
Dr Raquel da Silva (University of Coimbra) and Prof Nerve Macaspac (City University of New York) will present their research on the topic and introduce the session.
Raquel is interested in discussions surrounding the imperative to address instances of police violence. She is particularly keen on exploring reconceptualizations of the understanding of security and its governance in relation to the state policing apparatus by exploring how community-led intersectional politics of care can mitigate structural conditions of violence. Nerve’s research explores a relational framework that puts practices of unarmed community self-protection in dialogue with the scholarship of “abolition geography” in rethinking how everyday life might be lived and organized—socially and spatially—that does not rely upon institutions that reproduce spaces of violence.
12.30 – 1.30 pm UTC on Thursday 14 November. Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
The session will be held in English and Spanish with simultaneous translation.
The aim of the Creating Safer Space Research Cafés is to enable people in different parts of the world to exchange knowledge and to help build a community of Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) researchers and practitioners.
Creating Safer Space project trains military officers in Indonesia
The Commission invited Delsy Ronnie, the Principal Investigator of the Creating Safer Space project and the Nonviolent Peaceforce Regional Representative for Asia, to hold a presentation on Human Security Aspects in Military Operations. He shared Nonviolent Peaceforce experiences in the Philippines, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Ukraine, and insights from the Creating Safer Space project in Papua. About 20 Indonesian middle-rank military officers from the Navy, Air Force and Army participated in the event.
The officers suggested that Nonviolent Peaceforce bring its experience to Papua, and recommended that it carry out work there to help the government reduce violence. This recommendation requires follow-up, since military decisions have to be made by officers of higher rank. Through this engagement activity, Nonviolent Peaceforce and its partner ICAIOS has influenced actors’ perspectives about violence and the importance of civilian protection in the armed conflict in Papua.
The policy brief offers recommendations to UCP organisations, policymakers, the international community, and to religious leaders.
Creating Safer Space Exhibition in Brazil
The Creating Safer Space Exhibition was hosted by the Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (IRI/PUC-Rio) between 12 and 23 August 2024. The exhibition was on display at the Department of Art and Design Hall.
Victória Monteiro da Silva Santos and Christian Cantuária from IRI/PUC-Rio report on the exhibition:
IRI/PUC-Rio hosted the exhibition as part of a series of activities that marked 10 years of its project Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM), which was supported by two Brazilian research foundations (CAPES and FAPERJ). During the period, IRI also held several activities led by Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (Creating Safer Space Principal Investigator), Laura Jimenez (Creating Safer Space Research Assistant), Amaya Querejazu and Christine Andrä, many of which were associated with the exhibition itself.
The exhibition explores the unexpected power of nonviolence in the protection of civilians living in the midst of violence, featuring experiences from Cameroon, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Palestine, the Philippines, South Sudan, and Thailand. More information about the exhibition is available here. In Rio, it was accompanied by descriptions in English and Portuguese.
The exhibition was officially launched on 14 August 2024, including an inaugural talk and an exhibition tour dedicated to IRI/PUC-Rio’s undergraduate students that are part of its Research Initiation Program. At the launch, Berit, Laura, and Amaya led various groups around parts of the exhibition, prompting reflections on the diversity of culturally-specific relations to nonviolence and peace.
A series of other guided tours and associated debates were also held with different undergraduate and post-graduate student cohorts in the exhibition space. On 15 August 2024, Berit and Christine welcomed IRI/PUC-Rio’s Graduate students from an International Security class. Three questions were offered as prompts for the group’s reflection: 1) What are conflict-affected communities’ vulnerabilities beyond physical violence, and what does that tell us about security perceptions? 2) Which forms or actors of protection caught your attention and why? Can you think of similar examples from Brazil? 3) What are the specific qualities of creative methods in studying security-related topics; what are their possibilities and limits?
Over about two and a half hours, the group explored the space and discussed various strategies of resistance, ambivalence, and the role of nonviolence in the context of armed conflicts and situations of extreme violence, reflecting on how the three questions could be tackled through the exhibited strategies and beyond. For instance, IRI’s professor Maira Siman and master’s student Eduarda Lopes inquired about the strategy of not wearing school uniforms by students in West Africa. This interest stemmed from the contrast with dangerous communities in Rio de Janeiro, where school uniforms can mean the difference between life and death during a police operation. Professor Berit explained that, in those conflicts in West Africa, school uniforms would allow for the tracking and personal identification of students, especially girls. Therefore, it was wiser not to be identifiable.
Another master’s student, Christian Cantuária, asked about the illustrations of men wearing blue helmets and whether they symbolized the UN “blue helmets” or peacekeepers. Given the distrust and scepticism of IR critical theory towards UN operations, Christian inquired whether those communities worked in partnership with international peacekeepers. Professors Amaya and Berit explained that the illustrations were created in the context of the Creating Safer Space project, and our other project colour, yellow, is the colour of the King in Thailand and could carry a different meaning for Thai society. Despite its association with the UN, they chose blue in that specific context to represent local peacebuilding efforts.
Moreover, on 22 August 2024, Berit and Laura worked with two groups of undergraduate students of the modules Methodology I and Methodology II, who were brought by the courses’ lecturer Victória Santos and their teaching assistants Luisa Mercedes, Eduarda Lopes, and Raíssa Caliano. The students were invited to identify the various research methods that could be identified in the exhibition, notably those that are creative or arts-based (such as participatory drawings, textile-making, the production of podcasts, and others) but also traditional ones, such as interviews. They reflected on how these various methods could be situated within different stages of the research, from project design, to the data generation and analysis, to the dissemination and impact stages, with different implications.
As students from both courses will be developing research over the course of the semester in collaboration with civil society activists in the field of Climate Justice, leading to the production of an encyclopaedia and a podcast season, this was an opportunity for students to reflect on the possibilities entailed by producing scientific knowledge that aims for impact in a way that does not isolate the university from society; and also to consider the possibilities posed by other forms of results dissemination beyond written articles and reports. Moreover, especially in the case of Methodology II students, the group discussed the politics of knowledge production in these kinds of projects, with an attention to how equitable relations can be maintained in North-South research collaborations.
Another guided visit was led on 19 August 2024 by IRI’s lecturer Luisa Lobato, who took her undergraduate students from the Security and International Relations course to the exhibition. Professor Luisa requested the students to study and reflect on the exhibition. Then, based on the image that captured their attention the most, each student had to answer three questions: 1) What conceptions of security does the selected work present, and in what way? 2) What ideas of threat, implicitly or explicitly, can be identified in the work? 3) How does the artist communicate these ideas of security and threat?
Overall, the exhibition was a rich opportunity not only for International Relations students but also for visitors from various other disciplines and fields, who were continuously prompted to reflect on the possibilities of nonviolent action and the resonances with Brazilian contexts marked not only by various forms of violence but by a wealth of resistance practices.
New journal article on artistic-cultural organisations in Colombia
The article is openly accessible in Spanish, and explores the risks that women, children and young people face who live in contexts of urban conflict in Medellín (Colombia) and who are involved in grassroots artistic-cultural organisations.
UCP/A Community of Practice Consultation with Creating Safer Space
In 2024, Creating Safer Space held three regional conferences, which brought together researchers, practitioners, artists, journalists, and policy-makers to share unique research methodologies, findings, and their implications for violence prevention, protection, and peacebuilding initiatives. The conferences were held in Nairobi (Kenya), Bangkok (Thailand) and Medellin (Colombia).
The Creating Safer Space Principal Investigator will share key takeaways and insights from the three conferences, and will be able to answer questions and share recommendations for an ever more inclusive practice of UCP/A.
