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PeaceWorks, an initiative of the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, is a programme that has a portfolio of projects with the overall aim of building peace, of strengthening values of mutual coexistence and respect for all communities. The primary motivation behind the PeaceWorks project was the Gujarat, [India] carnage of 2002. The mindless violence and systematic massacre of a particular community led to a deeply felt need to work through the arts, with young minds, to foster a spirit of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect across differences, and equality. Over the years the project has evolved into addressing a wider gambit of issues under the umbrella of ‘Learning to live with Difference’. Contents [hide] 1 PeaceWorks objectives are: 2 PeaceWorks - Winner of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Marketplace of Ideas Award 2010 3 Shortlisted for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and BMW Intercultural Innovations Award 2011 3.1 Dialogue for Peace 4 A brief glimpse at the process and some highlights 4.1 Peace trip to Pakistan 4.2 Cross Border initiative 4.3 Theatre as a tool to create awareness and engage youth 4.4 Peace Festival 4.5 Teacher training workshops [edit]PeaceWorks objectives are: 'a) address attitudes that lead to strife, intolerance, conflict, war. b) affect attitudes and values, in order to change thinking, break mindsets e) encourage creativity as a means to resolve conflict' PeaceWorks encourages out of box thinking and sensitivity towards pertinent socio-political issues.The project has inculcated various forms of non-formal means of exposure and activities within the classroom atmosphere. Activities such as theatre and art workshops, literature curriculum that involves creative writing and storytelling, photography, films - these are used as tools to not only broaden the horizons of young minds but take them out of the mold of value-laden theorizing, and challenging deep-rooted apathy. PeaceWorks engages in workshops and training for teachers with appropriate resource persons. This way training becomes sustainable even as groups of students pass out. Learning is not institutionalized, much less isolated. A self-propagating system is ensured by working with previous participants and molding them as volunteers/facilitators who in turn work with new participants. PeaceWorks has forged effective collaborations with various civil society organizations working in the field of arts and social development such as Swayam, Bal Vividha, Chip House, Women's Interlinked Foundation and most recently with NabaDisha - A kolkata police project. Notable individuals with expertise in various fields of arts, social research and development and academia have served as faciliatators for different PeaceWorks activities - the likes of Mahashweta Devi, Ruth Margraff, Jayant Kriplani, Amit Chaudhuri, Minu Tharoor, Dilip Simeon have all been a part of PeaceWorks programs in the past and continue to have a strong relationship to the organization. PeaceWorks has conducted several cross border initiatives between India and Pakistan and is now working with youth from Kashmir. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ [edit]PeaceWorks - Winner of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Marketplace of Ideas Award 2010 [edit]Shortlisted for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and BMW Intercultural Innovations Award 2011 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[edit]Dialogue for Peace One of the most recent initiatives Dialogue for Peace is a sustained exchange programme between high school/college students from Kashmir and Calcutta. PeaceWorks' most recent initiative, supported by the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development aims to —Tap the inherent creative impulse to deal with internal conflict and find new ways to cope with conflict in the community —Empower youth to find a path to reconciliation through the arts —Through creativity inject will, aspiration and motivation to work towards imagined futures —Build cross cultural bridges and develop critical thinking and break mindsets _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ [edit]A brief glimpse at the process and some highlights [edit]Peace trip to Pakistan “Crossing the Wagah border on foot was an experience in itself. Just that one stroke of paint on the tarred road had been the reason for years of hostility and animosity and the cause of so many deaths. “It wasn’t the big things but the little things here and there, gestures and unfamiliar sights and sounds that actually caught my attention. Karachi High School was like a melting pot, where no one could tell one from the other. At the end of three days it was time for goodbyes. All our Pakistani friends had stayed up the whole night and had helped us pack.” Purti Melanie Simon: Class eleven, La Martiniere for Girls. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ [edit]Cross Border initiative Kites for Peace, was launched in Pakistan in January 2007 at the International Schools Educational Olympiad organized by the Karachi High School. The idea was to approach schools in both nations and ask students to write messages of friendship and amity on the kites to their counterparts across the border. Approximately 1,200 kites were signed by students from the 92 schools who participated in the Olympiad. Five hundred such kites were later sent to Calcutta. On 4 April 2007, Kites For Peace was launched in India at the Modern High School, Calcutta, by His Excellency Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi, Governor of West Bengal. Several schools from all over India supported this initiative and more kites were signed by students. The project was successfully conducted in both countries and approximately 5,000 kites were collected. The 60th year of Independence which also marks the 60th year of Partition witnessed the display of kites at various locations all over Calcutta. Mr. Arif Ikram, Captain, Karachi Boat Club, carried 200 kites signed by students from India back to Pakistan when he visited Calcutta. These kites were displayed in Pakistan during the same period that they were displayed in India. Also for the sixtieth year of partition, PeaceWorks involved school children all over the sub-continent in its project, Stories for Peace, a call for entries for students between the age of fourteen and eighteen to write a short story exploring the theme of peace. Fliers inviting students to submit a story for peace was disseminated widely to schools all over India and Pakistan. The PeaceWorks link on the Seagull website was used to publicize this event. Eye-catching posters were prominently displayed in the participating schools. Over 150 entries were received from students from the entire sub-continent. A board of eminent judges selected twenty of these stories that have been published in an illustrated anthology published by Seagull Books, a publishing house that is well-known for the quality of its publications. Photographs here >> _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ [edit]Theatre as a tool to create awareness and engage youth Peacewards It was a call for peace. And the brilliant cast ensured that it told on the conscience of the audience gathered in large numbers. Raise your voice when justice is denied to you. Speak your mind under the most strenuous circumstances – these were the primary messages of PeaceWork’s production Peacewards directed by Jayant Kripalani, based on Manjula Padmanaban’s monologues written post the Gujarat riots. A man confesses that he has ‘stamped out’ countless ‘hidden fires’—human lives that are less than human to him, merely faceless threats to his own security—and then finds himself on the receiving end of the same ruthless treatment. A young woman anchoring a television programme called Know the Truth; smiles her way dismissively through a stream of panic-stricken phone calls from viewers reporting violence in their neighbourhoods, refusing to admit that the Government can be wrong in its insistence that the situation is under control. Famous Last Words is a game show with a sinister edge, in which the young host plays games with real lives. The woman in ‘Points’ uses the fragile flame of a candle to make important points about nationalism and patriotism. And, finally, in ‘Invocation’, the names of ordinary people are used to create a memorial to all those killed by violence through no fault of their own, innocent victims whose names, sometimes, have been the sole cause of their death. Five powerful, hard hitting monologues in which the playwright tackles head-on issues of violence, intolerance of others, narrow concepts of community and nation, each with a twist that lifts it into the realm of real drama. These monologues have been published by Seagull Books _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lights Out Striding into a dark room, Jayant Kripalani turns on the lights and focuses them sharply on the handful of people waiting to hear him speak on his new theatre project. Running a series of video clips about violence on women, the theatre veteran unwraps Lights Out, the play his school-leaving cast of five will stage. “It’s pure black comedy and is about how we are all in denial when incidents of violence on women occur around us. I can say that the audience will identify with the characters,” says Kripalani, who has conceived the show and just let the youths do what they wanted. “And I am having a blast,” he adds. Scripted in 1985-86 by Delhi-based writer Manjula Padmanabhan, Lights Out deals with domestic abuse on a woman and the way it upsets the complacent equilibrium in the neighbourhood. Shorn of any furniture, the set boasted a backdrop by artist K.G. Subramanyan, no less. “Manida had done a series of window paintings some time ago. When Naveen Kishore (founder of Seagull) asked him to design the set with the window in mind, he readily agreed,” says Sumit Roy, in charge of lights. The on-stage action is “mostly visible through the window”. For Swayam, bonding with the PeaceWorks project is one of the ways to spread awareness about violence on women. “Culture is an effective medium of change and this forms a part of our programmes for raising awareness about closed-door violence,” says Anuradha Kapoor of Swayam. After Hidden Fires last year, Lights Out is the second play by Padmanabhan to be staged by PeaceWorks in a span of two years. “Because PeaceWorks tries to promote some sort of peace and we believe in theatre for change,” explains Kripalani, who is planning Hindi and Bengali adaptations of the play as well. PeaceWorks intends to take the show across schools and colleges. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[edit]Peace Festival In September 2007, PeaceWorks began a consolidated, year-long programme—The PeaceWorks School Curriculum—for high school students. The central theme of the curriculum is Living with Difference, highlighted through the various workshops and story telling sessions that explore issues of peace, tolerance, compassion, identity, gender, human rights. The ideas that the schoolchildren came up with through the curriculum interactions inspired us to organize a Peace festival. Students of classes 9 to 12, from schools all over the city, participated in workshops using theatre, photography, music and film to stimulate creative expressions of social concern. Over a hundred young students from very diverse religious and socio-economic backgrounds were part of the process. These workshops culminated in performances, exhibitions, and public service advertising campaigns throughout the city. Photography took the form of an exhibition at La Martiniere for Boys. Films were shown at The Calcutta Metro Stations and shop windows of television stores, plasmas at shopping malls. Theatre took the form of street plays, in three languages - Bengali, Hindi and English. Performers moved around the city in two buses and performed at strategic points. Music was showcased at the festival’s closing ceremony. The Peace Anthem has also been recorded by the music company Saregama India for further dissemination and will be on FM radio in the future. Thoda Pyaar Thoda Peace - PeaceWorks Peace Festival 2009 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ [edit]Teacher training workshops A large part of what we do at PeaceWorks – Teachers as further resource persons. Teachers as ambassadors of hope. Reviving interest in the teaching profession as a chosen vocation, like medicine. Creating a space that helps build the confidence to take chances—to experiment with topics from the curricula that is tackled completely uniquely—to use the existing curriculum to teach peace. The workshops for teachers are on diverse issues. As a result of this many teachers offer their services as resource persons for subsequent events. This snowballs into independent activity in other schools. Examples of these initiatives include workshops on Identity, on Race, on Reading Text, on Interpreting Stories, on Teaching History. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________