Artesanos de Paz: Promoting everyday peacebuilding among children and youth through a participatory theater-based intervention in Colombia.

Abstract

Peace can be built from the ground up. Moreover, peacebuilding is future-orientated and thus calls for a focus on children and youth. This approach involves a need to adapt methods to respond to the needs and abilities of young people, building their agency and capacities. Qualitative, participatory, arts-based methods offer such an approach, allowing for creativity, hope, and change for the future. This article will present qualitative data from 75 children and young people between the ages of 7 and 18 across three urban settings in Colombia and qualitative interviews with the adult stakeholders involved in the intervention, such as theater teachers and auxiliary researchers. A thematic analysis identified three major themes relating to peace: educating for peace, everyday peacebuilding, and building sustainable peace. From these categories, a textual data analysis was conducted using KH-Coder software to find cooccurrence networks. The implications for this article serve to further reinforce United Nations Resolutions 2250 (2015), 2419 (2018), and 2535 (2020), recognizing the essential role of children and youth in peacebuilding processes. Public Significance StatementThe findings of this study suggest that children and youth should be integrated into peacebuilding processes. To enable their contribution of perspectives, opinions, and actions to peacebuilding, it is crucial to develop strategies such as theater or other artistic expressions.