To teach, you must learn! That was the motto of the 100 territorial coordinators from the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), who are bringing the Arts for Peace Program to four departments. They participated in a training session where, through strategies for raising awareness, planning, teamwork, and production, they acquired essential and practical tools to bring to their communities and share with artist-educators and traditional knowledge holders.
The main objective of the training session, explained the program’s educational coordinator, Claudia Marcela Serrano Rodríguez, was to bring together the four members of each team so they could engage in a sensory and artistic creation experience, enabling them to take on the role of artist-educators and experts in preparing lessons and facilitating artistic processes. In addition, the setting allowed them to imagine and experience the classroom encounters between the trainers and the more than 70,500 Arts for Peace students.
One element that enriched the exercise, Serrano Rodríguez continued, was that the coordinators from Boyacá, Cesar, Norte de Santander, and Santander interacted during the awareness-raising and artistic creation sessions, with the aim of fostering a cultural and knowledge exchange in accordance with the customs of each region.
Nelly Andrea Pardo Savedra, an educational support staff member in Boyacá, acknowledged that the event was “enriching” and expressed her gratitude that it had taken place, “because it was stress-relieving and served to bring us together with the other coordinators from the different departments.”
The first stage of the exercise consisted of an awareness-raising activity, during which participants experienced aromas, smells, tastes, and textures while blindfolded. Following this, the teams selected an excerpt from a text and created an artistic piece based on it through music, dance, theater, creative writing, and audiovisual media—the arts taught to students by Artes para la Paz.
Jhareth Katherine Obregón Conde, the Enfoques coordinator in Sabana de Torres, stated that the experience, in which they could not see 100%, “allowed us to be more empathetic and organize ourselves to work better as a group.”
Meanwhile, Fabián Rodríguez Téllez, the operational coordinator in Catatumbo, noted that the activity will serve as a model to replicate in other regions, “since it is the trainers who are in direct contact with the children and who convey the lessons.”
“If we replicate exercises like the one we did in every node, we would significantly refresh the work carried out by our artist-trainers,” explained Luis Alejandro Forero Armenta, territorial coordinator in Cesar.
At the end of the day, the 100 program managers acknowledged the importance and relevance of the exercise, and said they enjoyed it because they faced challenges and resolved them through teamwork. The challenge now is to share and implement what they learned with the artist-educators and community experts in the regions, so that they can bring it into the classrooms and thus enrich the educational process for the students.
Artes para la Paz in Colombia
To date, Arts for Peace reaches 32 departments and 726 municipalities across the country, covering 66% of the national territory. More than 538,332 people have found in art a voice, a space, and an opportunity to transform their lives. Today, the program is present in 2 out of every 3 municipalities in Colombia, facilitating processes of training, creation, and community engagement that strengthen communities and make art a tangible force for coexistence, memory, and peace in these regions. For more information and to follow up on this initiative, visit:
And the Instagram profile @artesparalapaz.
