Creating in a World on Fire: Art, Imagination, and Peacebuilding

About the Event

We're living through a time of deep rupture. Conflicts are multiplying, institutions are under strain, and polarisation is growing. How do we create when everything feels like it's breaking apart? What is the role of arts and the creative process?

As scholar John Paul Lederach has written, peacebuilding is not merely technical - it is imaginative, human, and deeply creative. Lederach argues that lasting peace requires what he calls the "moral imagination": the capacity to imagine a shared future even in the midst of violence and division and to build relationships across the very lines that divide us. Geneva, a global hub for peace, is uniquely placed to explore this question. 

Initiatives like the Caux Arts and Peace Encounters and the Geneva Peace Forum point to a growing recognition that artistic process belongs at the heart of building peace, not on its periphery. Join us for a live conversation with two guests working at this intersection, exploring what it actually means to keep creating - and connecting - in a fractured world.

Recorded in front of an intimate audience, the conversation will later be shared more widely as an episode of the Hummingbird Collective, a podcast exploring how people find the courage to create and rebuild in a world on fire, co-produced by the Caux Foundation.

Discover the Podcast

The Hummingbird Collective podcast is a new podcast series, launched in spring 2026, dedicated to nurturing agency and belonging in a complex world. Learn more.

Moderator

SARAH NOBLE, Head of Global Engagement, Creative Peacebuilding and Inner Development, Caux Foundation

Sarah Noble is a Canadian peace advocate and storyteller based in Geneva, Switzerland. She serves as Head of Global Engagement, Creative Peacebuilding & Inner Development at the Caux Foundation, where she leads programs at the intersection of arts, narrative, and inner transformation, including the Caux Forums. She hosts the Hummingbird Collective Podcast, exploring how people find the courage to create and rebuild in a world on fire, co-produced by the Caux Foundation and supported by UNESCO's Intercultural Leadership Programme (2025–2026). She is also the Curator and co-founder of PeaceTalks at Interpeace, a global platform dedicated to amplifying diverse voices for peace. Since its creation, it has grown into 28 events across 9 countries, with 8,500+ attendees and 200+ speakers — from elementary school students to a former UN Secretary-General.

With more than 20 years of experience in strategic communications, fundraising, and partnerships in peacebuilding and non-profit media, Sarah is passionate about the power of storytelling as a tool for healing and social transformation. She previously served as Director of External Relations at The New Humanitarian, where she led the organization's rebrand from IRIN News, repositioning one of the world's leading humanitarian journalism outlets for long-term impact. In her TEDx talk, Storytelling is Our Real-Life Superpower, she explores how narratives can inspire change and shape a more hopeful future. Building on this message, her second TEDx talk, The Power of Inner Reflection for a Better Future, delves into the power of inner reflection as a foundation for creating a better world. She holds an MA in International Affairs from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a BA in Political Studies and Economics from Queen's University, and is an alumna and past president of the Geneva Hub of the Global Shapers.

Speakers

CHRISTOPHER BAILEY,  Co-Founding Director, Jameel Arts and Health Lab; Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University College London

Christopher Bailey is the Arts & Health Lead at WHO Headquarters. Educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, after a career as a professional actor and playwright, Christopher joined the Rockefeller Foundation as its Research Manager. From there he was recruited by WHO, where he led its health informatics work, and later its online communications team, before starting the Arts & Health programme. 

Bailey has performed original pieces such as Stage 4: Cancer and the Imagination, and The Vanishing Point: A journey into Blindness and Perception. The message of his work is to amplify the WHO definition of health, which states that health is not merely the absence of disease and infirmity but the attainment of the highest level of physical, mental, and social wellbeing. (photo: Jameel Arts & Health Lab)

SEIF KOUSMATE, Visual Artist (Morocco)

Seif Kousmate (b.1988) is a visual artist born in Essaouira and living in Tangier, Morocco. In 2014, he quit his civil engineering career and bought his first camera at 26. As a self-taught artist, he began his journey into photography by exploring documentary photography. His lens was focused on capturing the diverse manifestations of marginalization in Africa.

His early projects served as a platform for the narratives of Rwandan youth post genocide, formerly enslaved people in Mauritania (Haratins), and Subsaharian migrants in search of a better life in Europe. In Morocco, Seif’s work revolved around Boujloud celebrations and documented the lives in the Atlas Mountains facing climate change. Between 2020 and 2024, he worked on his series “Waha و“and his first monograph, a four-year essay on the oases and the changes they are facing.

Seif’s artistic practice has evolved over the past decade, now intersecting with contemporary art and photography. His latest project “Men Vs Fathers” earned him the nomination for the Prix Elysée 2025. This series explores masculinity and fatherhood, pushing the boundaries of photography into the realm of installation artwork and video.

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