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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Imagining Peace, an online toolkit mapping global arts-based peacebuilding. It assesses its methods, impact limits, and value for practitioners, highlighting how creative practices foster dialogue while noting gaps in long-term evidence.

Paper long abstract

This paper draws on Imagining Peace, a knowledge-sharing platform that documents and analyses how arts and cultural practices contribute to peacebuilding in contexts affected by conflict and its aftermath. The platform features an interactive toolkit built on global case studies of grassroots initiatives that advance key phases of peacebuilding, including conflict prevention, post-war reconciliation, awareness-raising, trauma healing, interethnic dialogue, and accountability.

By analysing the toolkit and its methodology, which is based on exchange and sharing of knowledge, the paper will assess its strengths and challenges. Some of the core questions it will address are: How can qualitative data collection risk misinterpretation? What are the limits of assessing the impact of artistic practices? Whom does the toolkit serve, and how? How might it be made more useful to organisations working in the field, and how could it also function as an advocacy tool?

On the other hand, the paper will highlight the distinctive capacities of creative practice to foster dialogue, agency, and community-led transformation by analysing a few relevant case studies from the toolkit. In this way, we will reveal persistent gaps in the evidence base, particularly regarding long-term impact and variations linked to the stage of conflict, historical background, and local context.

By positioning the toolkit as a bridge between practitioners, researchers, and policy actors, the paper outlines how creative methodologies can be more systematically integrated into future peacebuilding ecosystems. It further proposes ways in which culture and arts-oriented projects can serve as instruments for strengthening cross-sector engagement.