MUCCS is proud to be part of the UNESCO RIELA spring school this year, with a temporary exhibition of The Weight We Carried.

LOCATION
Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow
11 Chapel Lane Glasgow G11 6EW



This year the UNESCO RIELA Spring School focuses on peacebuilding, specifically using arts, languages and education. For 2025, we have curated a programme which explores how to build peace in the minds of people, how to live together peacefully, restoratively and interculturally, how to respond to and counteract current events worldwide that seek to divide societies, and how to ensure that peace prevails, founded on justice.

In so doing we acknowledge that to even contemplate peace when colleagues and friends in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and especially in Gaza, Sudan, Tigray, Ukraine and Lebanon (full list of armed conflicts available here) are experiencing genocide and war crimes of the most horrifying nature is, in itself, a luxury. We are seeing many of the international agreements and conventions which bind our work in the UNESCO Chair, at the University of Glasgow, in shreds and our own critical discussions mean that we have lost much faith, even the little we may have had, in peace-building initiatives. We see our work at present as requiring a degree of resignation from the violent structures which have now comprehensively failed. To work alongside those who should have been offered international refugee protection such that their lives and the conditions for their dignity and life might have been restored is now very much our urgent task. But how to do this when we are grieving tangible and intangible losses on so many levels? What sustains the work of peacebuilding and conflict transformation when language fails, when art is mourning, when grief is raw and critical capacities struggle to make any sense of the world?

And yet – this is our task as people of intellect. And study. And Art. And education. So, what might we say when words fail, when resignation is a necessary task, when forms which held hope no longer exist or are themselves destituted of all power?

Come and think this through with us.

Sub-topics we will be looking at:

• Non-violent strategies to prevent hatred, wars, and violent conflicts, we are especially interested in strategies that include languages and/or arts.

• Examples by community groups/organisations where peacebuilding is part of the integration methodology: what are the difficulties and best practices?

• Researching “peacebuilding”, how to deal with research-related issues (access to conflict areas, cultural representation, story extraction etc.).

• Educating the next generation of peacebuilders: bearing witness and passing on knowledge, approaches to integrate peacebuilding and conflict resolution into school curricula.

• When peace is not your daily reality, what can be done? Methods for using art to preserve the socio-cultural memory of people affected by conflict and to support mental health.

• Strategies for creating spaces for reconciliation and dialogue, creative art approaches to facilitate healing in post-conflict societies.

• Critical perspectives on liberal peacebuilding, on securitisation and theoretical models, routed in praxis, for enabling peace to prevail, perspectives from people with lived experience of conflict and persecution.
  

Read the full programme here

Observing the difficult three year anniversary of Ukraine’s full-scale invasion, this exhibition features the intimate stories of displaced Ukrainians who didn’t know when they’d return home. This collection of objects shows us the power of treasured family heirlooms as well as the seemingly ordinary things grabbed in the moment of departure.

We invite you to feel the spirit of a community that has carried its heritage proudly through all trials.

3rd February - 26th February 2025

Edinburgh Central Library, First Floor
7-9 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EG