Overview
PeaceTroupe has a history of extensive (and intensive) 'in situ' community residency. Indeed, one of the original propelling interests in the formation of PeaceTroupe was the integrated involvement in community mobilised and managed conflict response.

Our first application of such ideals was less "intervention" focused than it was on rebuilding in an almost-post-conflict community. (The war was present but waning in intensity during our residency.) This work took place from 1995 to 1996, spanning from pre-ceasefire to post-Dayton Accords, in the city of Sarajevo, in then Bosni i Herzegovina. We worked, during those months, on each of the projects that were begun by a group called ICHCR -- the International Cener for Help, Communication and Relationships. This group, founded by a Bosnian Muslim soldier and a philosopher, along with the assistance of a Bosnian Muslim soldier and artist. They enlisted friends and others and soon had acquired the use of a once-bustling-now-frigid-dark-and-damp delicatessen, whose owners had closed the doors against the war and the collapsed economy. (This deli stood a mere 50 feet from the heavily guarded and darkly ominous apartment complex occupied by Alijah Izbegovitch, the Sarajevan leader of the fast-shrinking Bosnia. While we never saw the President come or go, his comings and goings were easy to witness, with storms of soldiers and black cars being hard to miss. This proximity to the President seemed to our Bosnian hosts a mere "brush with power" something akin to being across the street from a sports legend or famous artists, while to us (from the U.S.) it seemed an all-too-close target for then then still-daily shellings and shootings of a beseiged city.)

Other applications of living and working in close communities -- of being "in residence" -- have varied in their length and specific purpose, but have provided valuable insight into the particular methods (as well as pitfalls) of living and working in fragile communities. (Our work in Kosovo, in a month-long camp residency, was equally intimidating for the outward war, but was much more relaxed once we had managed the mixed busloads of Kosovar Serbs and Kosovar Albanians across the mined border of Kosovo into the relative normalcy of teetering Montenegro.)

Residency projects, by their nature, require both intense planning and full-out acceptance of chaos and randomness. This is particularly true when the geographic location of the community sits in the physical and ideological landscape that is the battleground for real war. More than any other residency experiences, it is these months of work in war-torn or bombarded communities which amplify and articulate the power and nature of the tools and methods that we have developed over our decade of "Cultural Animation".

If you are living in a community where conflict is growing or present, and you wish to discuss ways that PeaceTroupe can help address the issues and create an atmosphere of conflict resolution, please contact us confidentially.