We are an international community-based collective of arts educators, art therapists, artist teachers, and educators committed to facilitating arts and education initiatives with children and youth in conflict-affected environments. Through respect, open dialogue, and long-term cooperation, we work with local partners to create, produce and share these experiences with a broader global audience.
We believe the fostering of capabilities associated with the arts – from engaging in creative expression and reflection to big picture thinking – can provide people with the freedoms, abilities, and agency to respond to and take action in their daily lives.
We believe the fostering of capabilities associated with the arts – from engaging in creative expression and reflection to big picture thinking – can provide people with the freedoms, abilities, and agency to respond to and take action in their daily lives.
More than 420 million children and youth currently live in conflict-affected areas. One in five grow up in a war zone. The humanitarian group Save the Children (STC) estimates that conflict now impacts children at the highest rate in a generation. ArtsAction Group is committed to working with these communities, side by side, through the arts.
Artwork by student at St. Henry's College, Ilavalai, Sri Lanka
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic our lives have been altered in ways that none of us could have imagined. While physical distancing continues, we at ArtsAction Group are finding ways of engaging virtually with individuals and communities through the arts and education. We offer our website as a resource.
ArtsAction Group's Response to Black Lives Matter
The arts, at this time, continue to transcend restrictions and ongoing oppressions that stem from inequalities. As the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) states,
"NO CRISIS TOUCHES ON A SINGLE CAUSE OR ISSUE, all are intersectional, with overlapping impacts connecting race, gender, religion, orientation, ability, and every other characteristic that has been targeted for oppression. Every emergency, whatever triggered it, is also a social emergency, and social emergencies demand cultural responses" (Art Became the Oxygen, 2017, p. 7).
Artists and cultural workers continue to bring people together through performance, song, visual imagery, and stories. At the same time we are re-examining, as a global creative community, what is culture for? Who is it for? Who is present and who is absent?
In this moment we are witnessing the world mobilize through a shared response around the belief that Black Lives Matter. The continual, systemic injustices against Black Americans is a stain on any notion of justice in the United States of America.
As a collective we, ArtsAction Group, are a work in progress. We commit to continually questioning our own privilege, to ask difficult questions and to carry forward, with our partners, the work of individual and social transformation through the arts. As an organization with projects based in the US, we call upon the elected officials of that country to start a formal process of truth and reconciliation centered around our history of slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of land and resources, and the persistent racism that continues today. We support H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act put forward most recently by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee as well as H.Con.Res. 100 put forward by Representative Barbara Lee which notes the United States long-overdue debt of remembrance to not only those who lived through the egregious injustices connected to slavery, but also to their descendants, proposing a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation. This is to properly acknowledge, memorialize, and be a catalyst for progress toward jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human value, embracing our common humanity, and permanently eliminating persistent racial inequities. We also direct people to the work being done by Campaign Zero and #8cantwait.
The ArtsAction Group collective.
"NO CRISIS TOUCHES ON A SINGLE CAUSE OR ISSUE, all are intersectional, with overlapping impacts connecting race, gender, religion, orientation, ability, and every other characteristic that has been targeted for oppression. Every emergency, whatever triggered it, is also a social emergency, and social emergencies demand cultural responses" (Art Became the Oxygen, 2017, p. 7).
Artists and cultural workers continue to bring people together through performance, song, visual imagery, and stories. At the same time we are re-examining, as a global creative community, what is culture for? Who is it for? Who is present and who is absent?
In this moment we are witnessing the world mobilize through a shared response around the belief that Black Lives Matter. The continual, systemic injustices against Black Americans is a stain on any notion of justice in the United States of America.
As a collective we, ArtsAction Group, are a work in progress. We commit to continually questioning our own privilege, to ask difficult questions and to carry forward, with our partners, the work of individual and social transformation through the arts. As an organization with projects based in the US, we call upon the elected officials of that country to start a formal process of truth and reconciliation centered around our history of slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of land and resources, and the persistent racism that continues today. We support H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act put forward most recently by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee as well as H.Con.Res. 100 put forward by Representative Barbara Lee which notes the United States long-overdue debt of remembrance to not only those who lived through the egregious injustices connected to slavery, but also to their descendants, proposing a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation. This is to properly acknowledge, memorialize, and be a catalyst for progress toward jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human value, embracing our common humanity, and permanently eliminating persistent racial inequities. We also direct people to the work being done by Campaign Zero and #8cantwait.
The ArtsAction Group collective.
ArtsAction Group invites you to share with the world, what's outside your window?
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Click here for posters in Creole, Hassaniya Arabic, Albanian, Portuguese, Swahili, Bengali, Greek, and Spanish.
We are in a moment in time where people across the globe are experiencing social distancing and lock-down conditions due to the Covid19 pandemic. At the same time this experience and what it looks like varies for each of us and our communities.
Show us, tell us, sing to us - what do you see outside your window? Using photos, drawings, words, sounds, video - anything you want - share what's outside your window right now. Take a photo, #outsidemywindowcovid19 on Instagram, share your location and tag @artsactiongroup. We are also accepting images via our email address: artsactiongroup@gmail.com. Stay tuned for a gallery page on this site.
The work will be included in an online exhibition at a date to be determined. All ages welcome. We will also be posting different arts projects on our News and Lessons Page on a bi-weekly basis. If we can be of further service, we invite you to reach out via our contact form or social media. In loving kindness, the ArtsAction Group team.
Show us, tell us, sing to us - what do you see outside your window? Using photos, drawings, words, sounds, video - anything you want - share what's outside your window right now. Take a photo, #outsidemywindowcovid19 on Instagram, share your location and tag @artsactiongroup. We are also accepting images via our email address: artsactiongroup@gmail.com. Stay tuned for a gallery page on this site.
The work will be included in an online exhibition at a date to be determined. All ages welcome. We will also be posting different arts projects on our News and Lessons Page on a bi-weekly basis. If we can be of further service, we invite you to reach out via our contact form or social media. In loving kindness, the ArtsAction Group team.
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Partnerships We've partnered with JFdesigns, an entrepreneurial business created by Jillian Fishback, a high school student who brings together her passion for designing shoes with her passion for helping others. Seeking a way to make a difference in the world through the arts, she has created a line of custom shoes with 15% of the proceeds going directly to ArtsAction Group. The work is beautiful as is her commitment to children and youth globally. If interested in ordering a pair of these custom drawn shoes or if you want to learn more, please email jfdesignss@gmail.com, and follow @_jfdesigns on Instagram to see the work.
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