Creative peacebuilding (visual arts)

Creative peacebuilding is a form of visual arts that offers a creative means to bring about peace within conflicted contexts. The use of the visual arts for effective peacebuilding emphasizes a consideration of the nature of the context where the tool is applied by not necessarily following a set format or paradigm. It reflects the potential to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, and interpretations geared towards establishing and sustaining peace.
Generally speaking, the arts refers to the theory and the physical expressions of creativity found in human societies and cultures. The major constituents of the arts include literature (poetry, novels, short stories, and epic poetry), performing arts (music, dance, and theatre), and the visual arts, the last of which includes creations that can be seen. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term "creative" describes a quality of something created rather than imitated. In light of this, creative peacebuilding is a broad term for creative therapeutic strategies to create peace, within individuals, groups, and societies in conflict situations. Although used primarily to overcome violence, creative peacebuilding is also a preventative measure explored to establish stronger foundations of peaceful initiatives, especially when used with children.
Definitions of peacebuilding
Peacebuilding is a process that facilitates the establishment of sustainable peace by preventing the recurrence of violence through different approaches which address the root causes and effects of conflict. Peacebuilding is an alternative to violence through reconciliation, and economic and social transformation.
The term peacebuilding has been widely used since 1992, when it was used by the former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his An Agenda for Peace. Boutros-Ghali described peacebuilding as "action to identify and support structures, which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict."
According to Johan Galtung, peacebuilding is the process of creating self-supporting structures that "remove causes of wars and offer alternatives to war in situations where wars might occur."
Photography promotes freedom of participation, access, and engagement, which is within the control of the viewer, and also opens up process for peacebuilding. At their discretion and their pace, the viewer engages and reflects on their experiences, while seeing and dwelling in the experience of others. Such an experience often creates the need to revisit the picture.
Websites
Jolyon Mitchell has written about how websites have been used as a medium for promoting peace on the screen. Through the web, the world has become a global village. Therefore, websites can be created to facilitate peacebuilding. It offers a virtual location whereby individuals can login, get information, take action, and post and share issues to aid in peacebuilding.

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