We are an international community-based collective.
We are arts educators, art therapists, artist teachers, and educators committed to facilitating socially engaged arts and education initiatives with children and youth in conflict-affected environments towards individual and collective transformation. 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. All children, youth, and their communities should have opportunities to participate in arts, culture and education as a means of expression and transformation.
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. All children, youth, and their communities should have opportunities to participate in arts, culture and education as a means of expression and transformation.
More than 470 million children and youth currently live in recognized conflict-affected areas. This number continues to grow daily.
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Globally, one in six grow up in a conflict zone. The humanitarian group, Save the Children estimate that conflict now impacts children at the highest rate in a generation. In the United States, in January of 2022, the monthly child poverty rate increased to 17 percent, representing close to 13 million children. More immediately, UNICEF estimates that millions of children have been internally displaced due to war including most recently, Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. Also of immediate concern are the 40 million children having their education disrupted every year because of disasters exacerbated by climate change, a number that continues to increase. We are urgently being called upon to recognize our shared humanity. ArtsAction Group recognizes these realities and is committed to working with communities, side by side and by invitation, through the arts and education. |
Utopia/Dystopia: Utopi/Distopia, Kosovo 2017. Where do you see utopia? Where do you see dystopia? What is the space between the two? By wrestling with these engaging yet difficult questions, the children and youth are asked to examine the world around them and to envision the one the want to live in.
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EVERYWHERE!
image by Molly Costello (modified)
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As an international arts collective committed to working with young people in communities impacted by conflict, we support, unequivocally, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Since the war in Gaza erupted following the October 7 Hamas and Islamic Jihad attacks on Israeli communities, there are still hostages being held and over 14,000 children in Gaza killed. 21,000 children are missing and an estimated 17,000 are now unaccompanied or separated from their families. These numbers continue to climb in ways that are unconscionable. We believe in the right to peaceful protest where people everywhere should be free to exercise their human right to dignified existence, expression, and validation of experience, without fear of being targeted, killed, arrested, tortured, and/or subject to other unnecessary and excessive force. We need to collectively stop the cultivation of hate and indifference. This is not the children's war. |
Our Work
Click on images below for specific information on regional projects, our commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, publications and more. You can also check out our ArtsAction Group youtube channel.
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New Publications
Check it out! Publications – ranging from a new edited volume that explores a range of international community-based creative development work as well as online and print catalogs.
