REDESEARTE Culture of Peace

“I saw the class through the window and decided to sign up because it looked interesting... Here I can meet up with my friends and learn... it’s not boring like school… Here you lose your inhibitions and if you make a mistake everyone helps you; no one makes fun of us.”

Marco Javier Lerma Contreras. Age 10. 

It represents an innovative strategy whereby, for the first time in Mexico, the arts are seen as an educational tool that helps strengthen individuals’ identities and the social fabric and reclaim public spaces and coexistence in diversity, among children, adolescents, young people, and their families. This experience is a part of local-level social development programs, particularly in Ciudad Juárez (state of Chihuahua, Mexico), one of the cities most affected by violence, which managed to counter that trend through an interinstitutional intervention where art education was given a place to reestablish social coexistence and to address the affective needs of the population.

This artistic education program, sponsored by the Ministry for Social Development, ConArte, and the Ciudad Juárez municipal government, provides an example of how, through cooperation between civil society and the three levels of government – federal, state, and municipal – strategies can be created that make use of art education tools to construct a culture of peace and to promote respect for diversity and active social participation, which helped revert a climate of extreme social violence.

This strategy is put into practice through the creation of arts workshops (dance, music, theatre, song) at the municipality’s Centers for Community Development, which for the first time offer art education and education for diversity. These art workshops, which have a particular orientation that promotes community coexistence and a culture of peace, create opportunities for affection, security, and learning and foster new expressive, analytical, and communicational abilities among children, adolescents, young people and their families. In this way, art education is interconnected with other fields of development, such as health, nutrition, etc.

Another of the reasons why this experience was selected was the emphasis it places on the development of new local capacities – through teacher training at the local level, for example – for ownership and development of art education methods designed for implementation in highly marginalized areas.

Finally, as a result of the replication of this experience in other cities (Nogales, Sonora; Tapachula, Chiapas; and San Luis Potosí, SLP), a network of RedeseArte Cultura de Paz cities has been created.

GOALS SOUGHT

RedeseArte Cultura de Paz was created in Ciudad Juárez with the aim of promoting and developing the art and culture skills of the city’s children and young people, and of creating mechanisms for improving neighborhood coexistence and the integral development of citizens in those Juárez communities facing the gravest problems of poverty and violence.

The experience seeks to connect the city’s outlying areas and zones of highest marginalization through the establishment of a community network based on artistic education. Within this network, methodologies targeting children, adolescents, young people, and their families are implemented that contribute to restoring coexistence in diversity and reclaiming public spaces, both of which are seen as basic strategies of social development.

WHAT IT INVOLVES

It is an artistic education program, implemented by the Ministry for Social Development, ConArte and the Ciudad Juárez municipal government, that expands the tools and opportunities for artistic training among the children, adolescents, and young people of Ciudad Juárez, as a vehicle for coexistence, trust, and respectful dialogue within diversity.

It encourages integral development to channel the creative energy of young and old alike into the reconstruction of cohesive community values.

The program was launched in Ciudad Juárez, at a time when public life was in a state of extreme decay because of violence. Its actions are channeled in three directions:

1. By organizing workshops where the languages of art are combined in education strategies for diversity, local artists are trained to work with methods designed to assist children, adolescents, young people, and their families in highly marginalized peripheral urban areas. The program is thus designed as a process of technology transfer geared toward strengthening the capacities of the artistic sector that seeks to be locally sustainable and replicable.
2. Workshops – such as Urban Dance, From Salsa to Hip Hop, Scenic Arts, Youth Groups and Music Ensembles, ¡Ah qué la Canción!, Mexican Music in the Community, Strategies for Coexistence in Diversity – based on methods created by the International Art and School Consortium, A.C., a nongovernmental nonprofit organization operational in the country since 2006 and in Ciudad Juárez since 2009. The workshops offer collective, cooperative spaces that redefine the role of the person, the body, and individual and social spaces, and that promote the artistic and cultural skills of children and young people. They are held in Community Development Centers, where they have close ties with the health, nutrition, and employment programs implemented by the municipality and the Ministry for Social Development.
3. They promote community coexistence, emphasizing the recovery of public spaces and the social ownership of the cultural infrastructure to which, previously, the marginalized populations of the outlying areas did not have access. As a part of this component, artistic presentations are held at the Community Centers and/or the city’s leading performance venues where, each year, all the participants put on a monumental event that mobilizes the entire city. 

TARGET AUDIENCE

It is aimed at children, adolescents, and young people. However, when applied at the community level, its beneficiaries also include adults and senior citizens, who have already signed up as students at twenty-five (25) Community Development Centers in Ciudad Juárez.

The population served totals two thousand, five hundred (2,500) children, adolescents, and young people.

This program has also enabled the training of more than a hundred and twenty (120) Juárez artists.

ACHIEVEMENTS

The transformation of their children and young people is highly appreciated by families and the community. Some, who dreamed of being contract killers, have found new ways forward and, in some cases, have gone back to school.

In spite of their surroundings, they have acquired new social, cognitive, and expressive skills and new ways to relate to their families, schools, and communities.

The bases of the methodology and the work with the body, movement, and rhythm are based on respect, conscious discipline, teamwork, and the acknowledgment of diversity. This form of participation enables them to conceive of themselves and act as more committed citizens, since from an early age they are an active part of the community.

The arts, in a formative and experience-transforming sense, are creating a new generation in Juárez. 

HOW THE COMMUNITIES PARTICIPATE

The children and young people are involved in the learning process, and they propose and create their own phrases, movements, scenes, narratives, and rhythms.

The teachers serve to facilitate and structure the experience and, frequently, they also act as counselors. Volunteer promoters from the community–chiefly women and young people–promote the workshops and also receive training in strategies for coexistence in diversity.

The center coordinators are involved with the promotional efforts, and in all the presentations held as a way to recuperate public spaces and to use the cultural infrastructure. Groups of parents accompany the different activities at other centers and in theatres.

TEACHERS’ PROFILE

Professionals in music, dance, and theatre who answered a public invitation to artists in Ciudad Juárez “with love and passion” to work in zones that were previously no-go areas.

To be selected, they must have professional training in the arts, particularly in the discipline they plan to represent. If they do not have that training, evidence of experience is requested.

The selected artists receive approximately 50 hours of training in ConArte’s methods. Only the best professionals become teachers of the RedeseArte Program.

The training is continuous over a space of three years, after which they can embark on the training of new trainers. Because this stage in the development of the project has come to an end, some of the teachers from Ciudad Juárez have already begun to participate in training efforts in other cities.

INVESTMENT AND FINANCING

The annual budget for this initiative is six hundred and seven thousand, two hundred (607,200) U.S. dollars, 100% of which was initially contributed by the federal Ministry for Social Development (SEDESOL).

Since 2012, the municipal authorities of Ciudad Juárez have been contributing 40% of the budget.

EVALUATION AND RESULTS

Evaluation are conducted every four months by the ConArte trainer trainers. Evaluation is performed through academic monitoring at the Centers. The use of qualitative methods allows the implementation of the academic program and the methodological development of the teachers to be monitored.

Quantitative methods are used to keep monthly records of student attendance. Those records are kept by the ConArte coordinator in Ciudad Juárez.

In conjunction with SEDESOL, community dynamics and ties with the health, nutrition, and other programs are assessed by means of another evaluation.

RISK FACTORS

One of the identified risks is related to the fact that, although Ciudad Juárez has made a great deal of progress in combating violence compared to the critical years of 2009 and 2010, security perceptions are still one of the main problems affecting the city; as a result, sometimes community participation in everyday activities is still irregular.

Another risk is that a change in government could affect social development priorities. On occasions, and in certain sectors of the different levels of government, the idea that art and culture are not a priority still prevails.

FUTURE PLANS

The program is planned to be carried out over three years by ConArte, SEDESOL, and the municipality. Work is currently underway on a strategy to ensure its sustainability–both within the community and vis-à-vis its sources of funding–through the legal incorporation of a local NGO called ConArte Juárez.

Other challenges to be met include the inclusion of trainer training in institutional accreditation plans, and the expansion in other cities of the role of the Juárez teachers as trainer trainers. 

REPLICATION POTENTIAL

Because of the Program’s impact in the city, several other mayors asked for the program to be implemented in their municipalities. ConArte and SEDESOL have extended the RedeseArte Cultura de Paz program to Nogales (Sonora), Tapachula (Chiapas), and San Luis Potosí, where teachers from Juárez have already provided training for trainers. 

www.conarte.mx

PERSON IN CHARGE: Daniel Miranda Cano. Consorcio Internacional Arte y Escuela, A.C. (Civil society organization, nationwide scope) daniel.conarte@gmail.com