Color Up Peace is a futures design initiative that works at the intersection of art-making and technology to leverage artistic innovation as a tool of futures design. Color Up Peace is an entrepreneurial initiative that works at the intersection of art-making and technology to leverage artistic innovation as a tool of futures design in conflict-affected contexts. From a student initiative at the
American University in Bulgaria, Color Up Peace has grown to have projects/programs not only in Ukraine, but in about 15 other countries (e.g. Israel-Palestine and Kenya), as well as a special support program for Ukrainians who relocated to Finland during russia’s 2022-2025 full-scale war against Ukraine. The idea behind Color Up Peace is to encourage participants to think about peace and what peace means to them; to create opportunities for sharing visions of peace through digital visual means; to foster futures design of peace arrangements in the form of off-digital collective image transformations; to challenge the abundance of violence-centered and colonial imagery in media reporting and popular culture; and to employ digital image transformation as a means of democratic futures design and futures implementation. As the first and the core initiative of Color Up Peace went, Color Up Peace invites people from all over the world to submit photos of what peace is to them which Lisa turns into coloring pages (by drawing each one by hand digitally) for others to engage with and transform the original vision of peace. This digital-artistic futures design is at the core of such Color Up Peace activities as international trainings, context-specific workshops, on-site and virtual exhibitions, 9 art books, and a newly developed ed-tech piece to support people affected by war – especially Ukrainians.
