Inviting Children to Imagine Peace

"Filmmaker Wim Wenders and poet and philosopher Mary Zournazi worked together on Inventing Peace: A Dialogue on Perception. The two were driven by the same question: Why do we have such difficulty seeing peace? From this question, another follows: Why do we not have more representations of peace? They argue that 'Quintessentially, peace is the imagining of a different world, but a world that already surrounds us—it involves 'becoming aware' as the philosopher Martin Buber would put it. This becoming aware is a special kind of observation or of looking at the world that involves compassion, grace and care' (4). The challenge for artists is that stories of conflict are so much more exciting. Wenders and Zournazi conclude, then, that we can break cycles of violence by responding to trauma with this awareness in a way that 'invents' or builds peace. The artist's job is to help us see things differently, to help us develop 'the imagination required to transform images of violence and war, not by reproducing them,' but rather through stories that 'lead to a re-enchantment with the world and our usual ways of looking at it.'"