User:Peacebuilder83/sandbox

Visual Voices
Visual Voices is a non-profit organisation, based in Nicosia (Cyprus[|Cyprus]), supporting youth artists from communities affected by violent conflictviolent conflict. They promote the creation of contemporary [|visual art] that reflects the desire for positive social change and build the space for these ideas to be shared.

Projects
The Visual Voices vision is to become a global network of peacebuilding[|peacebuilding] organizations, practitioners and artists that recognize the value of arts-based interventions in peacebuilding and the power of art in peace advocacy. The Visual Voices network of organisations and internationally renowned artists- activists spans over 30 countries in Europe[|Europe], Southern Africa [|Southern Africa], South East Asia[|South East Asia], the Americas [|Americas] and the Greater MENA[|MENA] region.

The Visual Voices mission is to strengthen the capacity of young artists (18-35 years old) from communities affected by violent conflict, while building non-commercial platforms of expression for them to share their voice and advocate for peace through contemporary visual art. In doing so, they aim to combine traditional arts-based peacebuilding activities with substantive peace advocacy campaigns. For this reason, they define themselves as working at the intersection between strategic social artsocial art and peacebuilding.

They believe that their primary target group, youth artists from communities affected by violent conflict, have incredible potential to promote positive social change. By positively addressing their challenges and lived experiences of conflict within their art, artists stimulate dialogue and peace-oriented social narratives. Reaching new audiences, Visual Voices supports young artists to share their work through conferences, presentations, campaigns and exhibitions.

Methodology
Visual Voices believes in the transformative power of art and seeks to support young visual artists from communities affected by violent conflict. They believe that such artistic expression contributes to a larger peacebuilding dialogue and promotes positive social change. Supporting a new community of artist-activists, they seek to challenge existing conflict narratives by creating space for the development of peace-supporting narratives. They achieve this through thematic artist-in-residence[|artist-in-residence] programs and non-commercial exhibitions that focus on peace education, studio time, applied cultural management and thematic workshops.