The organization and holding of these Dialogs was part of an initial effort to map networks, perspectives, and projects that seek transformative methodologies of violence, adding to a set of initiatives of researchers and institutions integrated here in the scope of the Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM), of the Institute of International Relations of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (IRI/PUC-Rio), and of partner universities and organizations, especially in the urban and human rights axes. Moreover, the organization of these dialogues is connected to a growing demand for the systematization of transversal artistic-cultural approaches.

At the confluence of the urban, territorial, and artistic-cultural, a discussion has emerged that takes place internationally to think about these issues in a localized manner in different contexts of armed conflicts, understanding cities as multiscalar access points to local and everyday realities. This ongoing collective project intends to contribute to this discussion through proposals to map the territories of violence and methodologies thus situated. Attentive to the specific historical and sociological register of the Brazilian reality, it seeks to locate and make visible practices capable of reorienting the debate and influencing public policies in the context of a state, such as Rio de Janeiro, with a declared and permanent public security crisis.

The publication aims to contribute to the theoretical-methodological integration between the field of Conflict Resolution and Transformation studies and arts-based methodologies, poorly developed in a framework focused on international intervention practices in countries of the Global South, from actors of the Global North. In this sense, the Global South has been configured more as a case study or laboratory of experimentation, than mobilized in processes of knowledge and expertise production in the area. This project aims to refocus the field and critically extend its theoretical-methodological and practical framework from Latin America, giving centrality to the urban peripheries where most of the multiscalar disputes and armed violence tend to be concentrated.

The meetings, recorded and made available online at IRI’s YouTube channel, brought together researchers and artists from Brazil and other countries, mostly from the Global South, and promoted discussions about the role of artistic-cultural practices in the transformation of violence and in the construction of alternative imaginaries and pathways..