The arts are a powerful instrument in human relationships. The meanings and roles of the arts are virtually unlimited, ranging from a sphere in which to seek comfort and development to a means of expressing the most intense individual and collective passions and anger.

Regarding the urgency of contemporary social challenges, forms of communication require a certain contagion that, in addition to the written and oral word, require different languages ​​to say and other ways of communicating the sensitive dimension of lived experience (Hijar 2018). The aesthetic, as a way of appropriating reality, can be understood as a form of polysemic, indefinite and incomplete construction, which can contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge and open dialogue with other actors outside and within academia.

The movement of intersection between arts, politics and peace is historic and continuous. The arts constitute a powerful tool in politics and peacebuilding (Shank & Schirch 2008), offering approaches that can inform efforts to build more just, equal and peaceful societies.

This process can be identified, including, but not exclusively, at the level of “artivist” movements that contest, through non-violent means, the multiple oppressions of social and political norms, in the work of artists that aims to stop or reduce direct violence/ interpersonal, or in work with a view to transforming relationships within communities and/or societies or that promotes human flourishing through enjoyment, enjoyment and artistic production.

Based on the strong conviction that the arts can contribute to a better world, and that the encounter with feelings and emotions can transform a science marked by reason, this Workshop gets together researchers whose interdisciplinary work is linked with the fields of Peace Studies, Sociology, Musicology and Cultural Studies to discuss the role of the arts in politics and peace.

Activity within the scope of the research project REPLAY - Approaches to peace and the (re)production of violence in Mozambique, financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (EXPL/CPO-CPO / 1615 / 202)