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Helping Hands
The Peace Tiles Project
by L'Tanya Durante

What began as a father-daughter creativity session has grown into a global effort to raise awareness about issues that deeply impact the life prospects of children around the world – The Global Peace Tiles Project.

“Peace Tiles started as an activity with my 3-yo daughter. I began cutting out some of the pictures she had been drawing, rearranged them and created collage-like compositions onto a wood panel. We had such a good time. I thought that this process could be shared with students and youth workers more broadly,” explains Lars Hasselblad Torres, creator of The Peace Tiles Project.

In 2005, Peace Tiles joined with other groups to begin to raise awareness about issues that impact children around the world. One of Peace Tile’s formal initiatives is World Aids Day, which puts the spotlight on the international HIV/AIDS pandemic. Every year, the international health community and many of its allies recognize December 1 as World Aids Day.

According to Lars, working with partners to promote the Peace Tiles Project is a way to help advance the global campaign against AIDS. Specifically it can be used as:

Education vehicle -- young people are introduced to information about health and sexuality and the way in which AIDS impacts communities differently depending on geography, income, etc.
Peer-to-peer educational tool – by partnering with NEXT AID in South Africa, a forum was created to help boys and girls discuss sexuality. Through culture, it can be difficult for boys and girls to talk frankly about their own sexual experiences. Girls and boys created tiles separately about their sexual experiences and swapped. The goal was to raise awareness about images of self and how a positive or negative experience of sexuality at a young age can impact particularly overall self image, especially since so many young girls are not sexually active in a willful way through rape. This was a way to have the conversation without judgment.
Public awareness -- empower young people to get their stories, hopes and fears more visible to the public. Having murals installed in a public place can increase young people's voices in the global conversation.
Research -- one way of gathering evidence about young people's attitudes towards certain issues is through drawing. For example, video is shown and participants are asked to draw or illustrate key elements from the video. Lars sees Peace Tiles being used in the same way as a research tool in the future.

Peace tiles are produced in structured 1- or 2-day workshops. As Lars explains, starting a workshop usually begins with some kind of invitation. “Workshops come from some interest at the level of a community-based organization or a school. Usually through the web or word-of-mouth, they’ll approach me with help in putting it together.”

Workshops last from 2 ½ hours up to 4 ½ hours. Generally, workshops begin with an introduction to some issue or a question that could foster creativity in the story that will be told. For example, the question, “What is my place?” can be responded to in different ways: (1) geography and ecology; (2) connection to an institution (e.g., school or church); (3) inter-personal connections (e.g., relationships to individual people in their community).

After this discussion, the participants create their painted, collaged, or mixed assemblage background on the tile, an 8-inch square piece of plywood. At workshops, a whole range of materials are available -- stamps, magazines, scraps of cloth, sand and other organic materials (particularly when discussing something related to the environment); anything they can get their hands on that excites them and tells their stories better.

The workshop then transitions into creating the foreground, which is the narrative element that tells their stories. Once the tiles have been completed, they are arranged into a mural; arranged in a way that not only shows the relationship between individual stories, but with the collection of stories.

“In some communities, children don't have the opportunity to be expressive and create something they’re really proud,” explains Lars. “Children are welcome to keep their tiles or they can exchange the tiles with others in that workshop.” Tiles can also be exchanged via mail with other schools, installed onsite as a mural or contributed to an international mural.

While the original mission of Peace Tiles was to foster the self-expression of youth, Lars has seen the project expanded in unique ways. “The Memory Tiles Project is being used with senior citizens as a way of reflecting on life's greatest lessons that they’ve learned; how they learned it; where they were. It is a way for them to tell that story through collage and create snapshots about what they’ve learned as they’ve come through life and will be installed at one of the local arts centers.”

You don’t need to be an arts educator in order to arrange a Peace Tiles workshop. “Usually someone hears about the project and simply chooses to take it on as a way to engage young people. Sometimes a community-based organization or arts educator is looking for an interesting activity,” explains Lars. Anyone is encouraged to lead a workshop. Peace Tiles is a fun and dynamic way to engage young people. The resource section provides reading materials, including a workshop design guide to get you started. Visit the website for more information or send an email to peacetiles@gmail.com. For a more active, hands-on discussion of the Global Peace Tiles Project, visit Ned, an online social network for those who want to make positive change.

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