Arts and Peacebuilding
Creative Peace Collaboratory
The Creative Peace Collaboratory is a research, engagement, and translation initiative based in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. It is led by Dr Gillian Howell as part of her Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2023–2026, exploring music and other arts practices as resources for peacebuilding and peace-seeking.
The Creative Peace Collaboratory is where community artists and peacebuilders explore and expand the arts-peace-dialogue nexus through an evolving program of workshops and seminars. The Collaboratory’s work is grounded in John Paul Lederach’s concept of peacebuilding as constituted through creativity, relationality, risk-taking, and the capacity to imagine and bring into being that which does not yet exist. These dimensions make artistic ways of knowing, thinking, and doing critical resources for peacebuilding.
Building the Arts and Peacebuilding stream at the IfPB workshop with Space Melbourne
In May 2025, IfPB team members, affiliates and students who are interested in arts and peacebuilding came together to develop a shared vision for research and practice relating to the role of creative arts in peacebuilding. We were privileged to have this workshop facilitated by Space Melbourne who used LEGO Serious Play. Whilst being a lot of fun, it was an intense and rewarding creatively facilitated process.
