In 2024 we launched our peace garden in collaboration with Bridgend Farmhouse, and we ran our first peace camp on Mull, taking a small group of young people in Craigmillar to Camas outdoor centre in Mull for a week. Watch the video to find out more about our adventures this year:
Our Peace Garden project
Our peace garden collaboration with Bridgend Farmhouse and Multi-Cultural Family based launched in August 2024. Depute Provost Cllr Lesley Marion Campbell officially opened the garden and our launch party featured delicious food, creative workshops, a peace walk and singing from Protest in Harmony and was well attended by the local community.
We are developing a new project in South Edinburgh – a peace garden that will be planned and created together with the local community for the benefit of people in Craigmillar, the Inch and the surrounding area.
A recent crowdfunder together with a number of successful small grant applications have assured funding for the project for its first year.
We are working with a couple of other local charities who support families from marginalised communities across Edinburgh, and we will develop the project together. Bridgend Farmhouse has given us a designated space in their community garden to develop a space for peace.
We are developing this project collaboratively, thinking together about what peace means, and how we can build a culture of peace locally. We will then consider together how we might develop this space.
Peace Camp
We took a small group of young people from Craigmillar and the surrounding area to a peace camp at Camas outdoor centre in Mull in August 2024. You can see some of the photos from the trip in the video at the top of the page.
Feedback from the first Peace Camp from the young people was overwhelmingly positive in terms of connections, confidence and new understandings (‘I will go out and explore more’; ‘I have learnt I am good at planning things’). And we hope to run a similar camp in the future.
51 Strangers
51 Strangers takes its name from the alarming statistic that 51% of adults in Scotland said they hide their feelings of loneliness from other people. The same 2022 survey found that a quarter of the population reported feeling lonely some or all of the time during the previous month. This project aims to challenge the rise in social isolation and loneliness, particularly among young people. The project aims to facilitate the opportunity for social connection through face-to-face dialogue, re-establishing the value of communication and trust.
Initially, we will do this through a scavenger hunt game that encourages the participant to talk to strangers. As the project gains momentum, we will establish and facilitate community peacebuilding events.
To find out more about the project or to get involved contact Mark our peacebuilding coordinator
Pubic engagement
P&J runs our annual Carnall Peace Award – a prize giving and annual public lecture in September on the broad theme of international peace campaigning. Previous award winners have included Yemeni human rights organisation Mwatana, Professor Paul Rodgers, and Wi’am – the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Centre in Bethlehem.
We also run annual actions for peace and remembering conscientious objectors, including CO Day in May, and an alternative Remembrance Sunday in November.
Our plans to build an Opposing War Memorial in Princes Street Garden hit a number of hurdles, including the planned redesign of Princes Street Gardens that was initially delayed and then scrapped following the pandemic. Although many people gave generously to the crowdfunder, we were unable to successfully apply for a grant to supplement this. As a result out plans for the memorial have reduced in ambition somewhat.
But we are pleased that Edinburgh Council have now planted a handkerchief tree in the Gardens (see photo below) – which had great significance to Kate Ive’s original plans for a bronze sculpture of a handkerchief tree as a memorial to those who oppose war – that we have sponsored. Watch this space for more updates on the project.
Previous projects
Peacebuilding in primary schools
We anticipate these projects having their own impact going forward, with new peace and art exhibitions organised by the Peace Cranes curatorial team running alongside Peace and Justice core work, and a new emphasis on Peace Education growing out of the schools work we did before the Pandemic.
(Above) Pictures from the peace cranes exhibition in 2021 – the culmination of 5 years collecting 140,000 origami peace cranes from around the world to remember the first victims of nuclear weapons when the US bombed Hiroshima in 1945. See more about our peace cranes project here
