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Imagine: Reflections on Peace is a book, exhibition, short films and educational curriculum conceived to encourage discourse and conversation around peace building and ending conflict. It is an initiative of The VII Foundation, which was established in 2001 to challenge complex social, economic, environmental and human rights issues through documentary non-fiction storytelling and education.
using a curriculum that is generated by youth-led inquiry into what peace means for those living in a post-conflict country.
an opportunity to guide learners as they explore notions of peace and conflict resolution.
engaging with learners around a curriculum that offers a student-centered approach to reading, viewing, and analyzing multimedia sources like photography, videography, and text.
that your students, after deeply engaging in the creative process of imagining a better peace, become changemakers and innovators for a more peaceful and just world!
When battlefield prowess and political manipulation are not enough to achieve peace through victory, we summon our best and brightest to negotiate an end; we celebrate peace settlements; and we give prizes, if not to victors, then to visionaries. We exalt peace as a human achievement, and justly so. But the reality of peace is flawed. The rewards of peace are elusive for the men and women who live in the post-conflict societies of our time. Why is it so difficult to make a good peace when it is so easy to imagine?
That is the question behind Imagine: Reflections on Peace. In this expansive project, world-renown journalists and authors take us into societies that have suffered searing conflict—and survived. Photographic essays make the stakes during war and peace grippingly palpable. Compelling backstories about negotiations, tales of survival, and accounts of the search for inner peace make the big picture personal. They also reveal the complexities of redemption and rebuilding in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. With added insights from scholars and practitioners, the book offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the unvarnished story of peace and a window into what it takes for societies and individuals to move forward after unspeakable brutality.
Imagine: Reflections on Peace
Published in English as Imagine: Reflections on Peace and in French as Imagine: Penser la Paix.
408 pages, 200 photographs.
Available online and in selected bookstores across the US, UK and Europe on Oct. 6 2020.
Price: $49,95 | £39 | €45
students and educators please use discount code EDUIMAGINE
Two films produced by the VII Foundation for the Imagine project
The story of one man’s fight for survival. From a concentration camp in northwest Bosnia to life as a refugee in New Zealand, the will to live guides Elvis Garibovic through the stuff of nightmares to find his own sense of inner peace.
Produced by VII Foundation Films
Runs 15 mins
Pre-release: For screening copies please contact:
[email protected]
Veteran war photographer Jack Picone returns to Rwanda where the searing images of the genocide he photographed in 1994 remain deep in his psyche. He finds great progress, but also sees a nation conflicted by personal memory and the national dictate to forgive.
Produced by VII Foundation Films
Runs 25 mins
Pre-release: For screening copies please contact:
[email protected]
With thanks for the generous support of Blue Chip Foundation and the William, Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation, without which this project would exist only in our imagination.
