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.
We are happy to announce the publication of Transformimi: Dikur, Tani Dhe Nesër/Transformation: Past, Present, Future ArtsAction Group: Kosovo. The book catalogues our 2019 project in Therandës-Suharekës, Kosovo. You can view the book here or view a website version here.
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.
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Partnerships We want to thank Jillian Fishback, a high school student and owner of JFdesigns. Jillian brought 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 created a line of custom shoes with 15% of the proceeds which went 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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