Drawing peace: Towards a pedagogy for positive international relations

This research explores the pedagogical use of artistic means in international relations (IR). By joining the aesthetic turn in politics and IR, the proposed study aims to investigate how drawing as a creative learning method affects individual agency – specifically youths in this paper – to understand peace and war. Working with data collected through class observations and surveys on two art projects, ‘Visualizing Peace’ and ‘Designing Museum’, we argue that drawing in IR pedagogy, peace and conflict studies in particular, not only invites students to get more interested in our world with a hope to create more peaceful global relations, but it also helps them become aware of their own individual agency to work for humanity. The result mainly elucidates how students can rethink conflict narratives at stake when experiencing them through aesthetic practices, and this, among others. It also demonstrates to what extent politics through art can broaden our understanding of political phenomena as a way of creating a space for more inclusive peace narratives in place of the existing divisive ones. The significance of the research stems from its importance to reveal the analytical purchase of everyday IR in exploring peace and conflict resolution. The findings not only enrich IR scholarship on teaching politics through the arts but also contribute to discovering innovative pedagogical skills, practiced and empowered through aesthetic means, which in turn can make IR more appealing to students.