Imagination, Arts, and the Long Work of Peace

Maruee Pahuja (India) works at the intersection of art, science, and human connection. An expressive arts consultant, visual artist, and process facilitator, she explores how creativity can nurture empathy, resilience, and pathways to peace.

At the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, she leads arts-based work with young leaders through the Creative Leadership youth initiative and serves on the advisory committee of the Caux Arts and Peace Encounters.

Maruee was a speaker at a range of international events, including the Kofi Annan Peace Address 2024, International Day of Conscience 202e and the closing ceremony of Geneva Peace Week 2024, and facilitated workshops exloring imagination, movement, and creative expression as powerful tools for empathy, hope, and resilience. 

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I am a chronic thinker, and turning all these reflections into a post felt daunting. As Adrienne Maree Brown writes in Emergent Strategy, I may be “guilty of being a visionary talker, so I concentrate my work on the generation of vision, the strengthening of the muscle of looking forward together.”

Reflecting on my recent activities around the role of the arts in peacebuilding allowed me to step into an intersection I’ve been intentionally walking for years. Preparing for the Caux Arts and Peace Encounters last year or my workshop at Geneva Peace Week 2025 was both a joy and a reckoning. What looks like a few weeks of preparation is actually the tip of years of invisible work: research, practice, trial, error, and trust in the arts and in humanity, even amid challenging political ecosystems.

The Role of Arts in Peacebuilding

In our line of work, burnout, hopelessness, and empathy exhaustion are common. A friend once said to me: "Trust your creativity; it's really the ultimate insurance policy in life. The creative act is what keeps us alive and well." If we want to continue working as changemakers, leaders, and peacebuilders, we must first be alive and well ourselves.

As peacebuilding pioneer John Paul Lederach says, peacebuilding itself is a creative act. This reminds me of salutogenesis — the origin of health. It’s not about curing disease after it occurs, but about focusing on the conditions that create health and resilience.

The world is full of polycrises. Overwhelm, fatigue, and anxiety are inevitable. Many young leaders I’ve worked with have expressed these struggles. But sustaining imagination in such times is critical. One powerful tool to do so is the arts, because as I often remind participants: "Art gives us a language when words are not enough."

Art gives us a language when words are not enough.

A Concrete Example: Creative Leadership and Youth

I am part of the Creative Leadership youth team at Caux Initiatives of Change. Six years ago, I began introducing creativity and expressive arts to online conferences and gatherings for youth worldwide. Since then, we’ve hosted five online conferences — from exploring uncertainty to imagining new possibilities, reimagining democracies, and weaving personal and collective narratives.

Through arts-based methods like creative writing, visual expression, movement, music, photography, nature-based arts, mindfulness, and creative dialogue  participants learn to explore and express beyond the limitations of words alone.

This year, we are going to host “Reimagining Democracy(ies)”, the second edition of our in-house programme for young leaders at the Caux Palace, fully integrating these creative approaches as core leadership tools, not optional “add-ons.”

These events ripple outward. Participants create arts-based workshops in their communities, schools, and organizations using creative methods to foster dialogue, empathy, and resilience. Many report the arts based sessions  as the most impactful workshops they’ve attended, and some seek guidance on designing arts interventions for youth in their organisations.

Arts as Process, Not Product

It’s important to distinguish between arts as product or skill and arts as processes for community building, expression, and healing. Many people conflate art therapy, expressive arts therapy, art as therapy and other arts-based approaches, but each has a unique philosophy and methodology.

In my own practice, these dimensions intersect in different ways:

As an ocularist, I restore vision and presence to individuals who have lost an eye due to trauma, war, or disease. This technical and artistic work restores dignity, hope, and social engagement.

As a visual artist, I create multisensory installations that expand perceptual empathy, exploring themes of visibility, identity, inclusion, and perception. The goal is not to produce a fixed product but to provoke reflection.

As an expressive arts facilitator, I guide participants through creative processes that foster relational transformation, dialogue, and community resilience. The aim is not to create a polished piece of art, but to hold a space where meaning can emerge and empathy and imagination can grow.

Several insights have emerged from this work:

• From making sense to sense-making: expression and embodiment first, reflection second.
• Act → Pause → Reflect → Insight: a cycle that builds resilience and relational trust.
• Low skill, high sensitivity: breaking performance-based barriers and tapping into inherent creative capacity.

Arts can also be disruptive, challenging dominant narratives, expanding perspectives, and questioning assumed “truths.” In a world that reduces people to roles or data points, the arts re-humanize, creating possibilities no one dared imagine.

As Maria Popova writes: "The very few — those who refuse to mistake the limits of the permissible for the horizon of the possible — will build a whole new table, populating the fresh slate of its surface with options others have not dared imagine. These are the visionaries, [the artists] — the only people who have ever changed this world."

The goal is not to create a polished piece of art, but to hold a space, surface meaning, and cultivate empathy and imagination.

Sustainability in Peacebuilding

Sustainability in peacebuilding is not simply about maintaining programmes. It is about nurturing regenerative capacities: imagination, curiosity, relational trust, and creative thinking.

Arts practices can help sustain hope even amid complexity and crisis.

Of course, challenges remain — limited resources, the risk of superficial engagement, and the difficulty of measuring subtle impacts such as relational trust or inner resilience. Yet these micro-practices embody the principles of emergent strategy: small, adaptive, relational actions that gradually shape the future.

Ultimately, the question may not be whether peace can exist, but how we create the conditions for it to be imagined anew.

The question may not be whether peace can exist, but how we create the conditions for it to be imagined anew.

Final Reflections

As we are preparing for the next edition of the Caux Arts and Peace Encounters (10 - 13 May 2026), I find myself holding more questions than answers — but also a deep sense of conviction.

• One thought can change the course of history.
• Belief systems are living, not fixed, and can be rewritten.
• The arts are quiet, patient forces that remind us of our shared humanity.
• Mastery is not knowing everything; it is staying open to what we do not yet know.

The arts invite us to inhabit curiosity deeply, expand consciousness, and sustain hope — essential tools for building peace in today’s world.

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Caux Arts and Peace Encounters 2026:  Next Steps

In a world where peace and cross-cultural understanding face increasing challenges, creating spaces for dialogue, empathy, and connection has never been more urgent. The arts are powerful tools to navigate complex emotions, foster healing, bridge divides, and build understanding.

Be part of this transformative gathering at Caux Arts and Peace Encounters 2026 (10 – 13 May 2026), where artists, peacebuilders, and changemakers explore how creativity can spark meaningful change in communities and in the world.

REGISTER NOW