story127.xml
Title
story127.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-03-04
911DA Story: Story
Introduction to the Peace Project book entitled "The Road to Peace, the Road Less Taken."
The peace project became a part of my syllabus for the Fundamentals of Design class after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This visual book is a project exploring peace and peacemakers. I introduced the project by asking my students to define a peacemaker. The class determined that a peacemaker is an active maker of peace in a conflict situation, not simply a peaceful person. A peacemaker uses and promotes non-violent means in the struggle to resolve conflict or fight oppression. Peacemakers are not always political figures. Artists may be peacemakers through the production of visual art, writing, music or performance that promotes peace or exposes oppression. With this definition, we constructed a list of possible peacemakers and each student researched two candidates. The class members practiced working collaboratively and making decisions by consensus throughout this project. During a ?teach-in,? students reported on their candidates and the group approved those that fit our definition of a peacemaker. Students then gathered photographic portraits, biographical information, quotes, and landscape photographs for each peacemaker. The visual book began as a watercolor mural keeping in mind that it would be folded into a Japanese Fold-Out book later. The peacemakers are ordered by geography, allowing for huge leaps between countries and continents, and linked by ?the road to peace? that runs through each landscape. The background paintings represent the site of the peacemakers? work. Students found it especially challenging to blend one landscape into another and coordinate their plans with the students on either side. The motto for this project quickly became ?we can not achieve peace without learning to work together.? Each student was responsible for two peacemakers, but students also worked on each other?s backgrounds when needed. Biographies for each peacemaker aim to provide some background information on the conflict they addressed and the non-violent means they used. Many of our peacemakers received the Nobel Peace Prize. Too many of them were assassinated for their views.
Through this project I hope the class members, and the viewers of this book, learned about collaboration, non-violent conflict resolution, contemporary peacemakers and the positive use of propaganda. Peace is not obvious. Peace must be taught, and learned.
Jeanette May
The peace project became a part of my syllabus for the Fundamentals of Design class after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This visual book is a project exploring peace and peacemakers. I introduced the project by asking my students to define a peacemaker. The class determined that a peacemaker is an active maker of peace in a conflict situation, not simply a peaceful person. A peacemaker uses and promotes non-violent means in the struggle to resolve conflict or fight oppression. Peacemakers are not always political figures. Artists may be peacemakers through the production of visual art, writing, music or performance that promotes peace or exposes oppression. With this definition, we constructed a list of possible peacemakers and each student researched two candidates. The class members practiced working collaboratively and making decisions by consensus throughout this project. During a ?teach-in,? students reported on their candidates and the group approved those that fit our definition of a peacemaker. Students then gathered photographic portraits, biographical information, quotes, and landscape photographs for each peacemaker. The visual book began as a watercolor mural keeping in mind that it would be folded into a Japanese Fold-Out book later. The peacemakers are ordered by geography, allowing for huge leaps between countries and continents, and linked by ?the road to peace? that runs through each landscape. The background paintings represent the site of the peacemakers? work. Students found it especially challenging to blend one landscape into another and coordinate their plans with the students on either side. The motto for this project quickly became ?we can not achieve peace without learning to work together.? Each student was responsible for two peacemakers, but students also worked on each other?s backgrounds when needed. Biographies for each peacemaker aim to provide some background information on the conflict they addressed and the non-violent means they used. Many of our peacemakers received the Nobel Peace Prize. Too many of them were assassinated for their views.
Through this project I hope the class members, and the viewers of this book, learned about collaboration, non-violent conflict resolution, contemporary peacemakers and the positive use of propaganda. Peace is not obvious. Peace must be taught, and learned.
Jeanette May
Collection
Citation
“story127.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 27, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/15716.