Main YWAM Page, or to YWAM CommunicationsTHE ARTS CAN help bring peace to a region torn apart by civil war, according to organizers of an ambitious musical tour planned for the summer.
A 50-strong group of dancers, mime artists and musicians is due to stage a multi-media production urging reconciliation in seven cities across the Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian regions of former Yugoslavia.
Creation of the 90-minute work A Song in the Night was coordinated by missionary painter and sculptor Mauricio Palacio, after he spent three months helping resettle some of the thousands who fled their homes at the height of the "ethnic cleansing."
The allegorical production, scheduled to tour in August and September, tells the story of a farmer and his son whose workers fall out with each other, and is intended to subtly "encourage people to think about learning to live together, rather than getting caught up in bitterness over the past."
The program could reach people better than a sermon, says Palacio, because "art can portray powerful messages in a non-threatening way. Because of all the horrors they have experienced, they may respond better to something that weeps and feels with them, rather than someone coming and telling them they are wrong and they have to change."
He is putting A Song in the Night together with colleagues from the College of Communications and the worship department at Youth With A Mission's University of the Nations training center in Kona, Hawaii. Team members are being recruited from other YWAM centers around the world.
A former architect who began using his artistic skills in missionary service seven years ago, Palacio first visited Bosnia late last year, to help with Operation Emmaus. The program, overseeing previously thwarted attempts to resettle displaced communities, is being directed for the United Nations by Impact Teams International, a YWAM-affiliated organization in Kona.
Since the project began last June more than 800 people have been resettled--the first official returnees in what is a central part of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that brought an end to the vicious fighting.
Operation Emmaus volunteers accompany the returnees as they go back to their former communities and help repair the usually ransacked homes. The presence of the outsiders - in constant radio contact with nearby UN peacekeeping forces - has so far discouraged most of the intimidation that hampered previous resettlement attempts.
On his return from Bosnia, Palacio turned to sculpture and painting to capture some of his impressions of the stories he heard from survivors of the war. Together with several other pieces, and artifacts like grenade cases, his works feature in an exhibition which this month begins traveling to churches across the United States.
"I felt that many of us from outside of the region really didn't have much idea of what people had gone through, just from the news. I wanted to express God's broken heart, the spiritual and psychological scars left from the war, the pain and sorrow of the people, so others might be moved to respond to the needs," he said.
A Song in the Night/The Bosnia Experience: Impact Teams International, 75-5851 Kuakini Highway, Kailua-Kona, HI 96740, USA.
(Photo available on request)
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