Peace Garden is a symbol of Transformation, Common Future, and Peace…
New nature-based, creative and Peace Education practices are being developed by the Peace Garden.
As part of the scientific peace process of raising general awareness about sustainable and just living with a focus on the Wuppertal area, Peace Worker and Peace and Conflict Researcher Burcu Eke-Schneider made contact with the Alevi Community in the city at the beginning of 2020. This contact was preceded by a two-year “stakeholder/actor analysis”. She also invited the Wuppertal Institute and diverse actors in the city to be part of this constructive change. In February 2020, the “Urban Gardening Peace Project’s Peace Garden” was opened in the Alevi Cultural Center in Wuppertal. An important focus in raising awareness was on the use of various methods of transformative peace work and research. In this process, it is the first step in the implementation of constructive thinking and scalability in the field. The empirical data obtained has been shared by social media, scientific articles and other tools to be used by all practitioners contributing to peace science and work. The ongoing process has already shown that there is great potential for new ideas for and in a new normality among the various stakeholders.The long-term aim is to create a stronger connection to the environment through the natural element of soil, which would raise awareness of this neglected aspect and at the same time contribute to strengthening the community of all stakeholders.
The first wave of the pandemic made it possible to work in the Peace Garden throughout the season. Although the cultural center was closed, work was able to continue and a variety of organic vegetables and herbs were harvested in September. The creation of Peace Gardens in urban areas was also presented as part of the EU Parliament’s Urban A project. Participation in sustainability festivals such as the “Day of Good Life” also took place in the city.This transformative contribution, which made its first major success in the international arena in the field of peace science in 2022, was published as a policy brief at the G7 summit as a first evidence-based solution proposal. The project does without hierarchical structures.
We were able to show why spaces and avant-garde approaches are important for building peace, justice and sustainability together. Many political parties,artists,institutions and community representatives visited the Peace Garden. Organic gifts from the garden were sent to various bureaucrats and friends as a sign of solidarity. Nature experts were involved in the project and art and creative methods were used to build peace at -micro and local level.
Thank you for being with us, thank you for sharing your experiences and for believing in peace.
We wish you a just and peaceful transition!!!
Kind regards
This story has been published by the Georg Eckert Institute’s Leibniz Institute for Educational Media, Georg Arnhold Program internationally as a new method of sustainable education.
Creating Peace Gardens
I was born in Ankara. The streets of the neighborhood I lived in were wide capital avenues with linden and chestnut trees surrounding us with their shadows like a roof in summer. In winter, the poplar trees swayed from side to side with their majestic images, touching the sky. These great giants were friends who made it possible to breathe. The trees protected our mental health, embraced the ecosystem, and made our cities more livable.
I fought for the protection of the last trees on a central square in the city of Istanbul in 2013 during the Gezi Park movement. Society’s representatives of politically oppressed, vulnerable groups, and marginalized people who had come out of the ghettos, were starting to join in, and our protest became the sound of the city, seeking a real transformation. We were protesting against the damage done to our souls and bodies by cities made of concrete, and against the oppressive order which neo-liberal politics had brought upon us. It was a non-violent resistance for peace space, justice, and for “us”, against an increasingly authoritarian regime. In the following years, segregation in the society increased. At least, the trees are still there.
Following the protests, I was invited to become a student in a newly-founded Peace and Conflict Studies MA Program in Istanbul. While writing my Master’s thesis, I moved to the city of Wuppertal in Germany, where more than half of the population has a migrant background. When I arrived, the city was becoming a home to thousands of Syrian friends fleeing the war. Social injustices caused by ghettoization, isolation, and marginalization are very present in the city.
There was hardly any connection made between science and the real-world in scientific transformation literature in Europe at that time. I carried out a conflict analysis which led me to new ideas and scientific solutions for urban transformation on a micro level.
Jens Nordmann
By creating a dialogue with various actors in the city, we implemented a Peace Garden with diverse friends with backgrounds from Bosnia, Czech Republic, Syria and some local representatives of a marginalized Alevi community. All these communities had experienced war, massacre, or the destructive effect of communism. In order to heal the traumas passed down from generation to generation, the idea of creating a peace garden arose. With the help of nature we wanted to reduce violence in the urban environment.
The opening of the Peace Garden in a community center was celebrated in spring 2020. The Peace Garden uses a “nature-based approach” as a new dialogue method for a sustainable and just future in an urban context. All actors involved are able to meet at eye level – a prerequisite for any transformation.
Over time, the Peace Garden became an educational platform for out-of-school methods, where we exchange knowledge and learn from each other thanks to intercultural and interreligious dialogue, while growing organic vegetables, fruits and herbs, and learning about local biodiversity.
The city suffered severe damage due to climate change in a storm in July 2021. The same year, I witnessed simultaneous forest fires while visiting my family in my hometown. I believe that everything in the world is interconnected. We need to unite for humanity and nature. For all these reasons, the story of the Peace Garden has set out to heal our cities without forgetting the relationship and interconnectedness between humans, as well as between humanity and nature
While putting an end to these lines, the war drums started to play again in Europe. This is not a world we can accept, so we have to invest in peace through all kinds of new methods. This peace story was written with the hope that the cities we live in will turn into spaces where we can grow sunflowers, love and humanity instead of sowing violence.
Burcu Eke-Schneider
Peace worker
Burcu Eke-Schneider was born in Ankara, Türkiye. Following her field experiences, she studied Peace and Conflict Studies with a number of the world’s renowned professors. She is an independent peace and conflict researcher. In 2018, Burcu initiated a local and transformative peacebuilding study in Wuppertal, Germany focusing on nature-based solutions for community peacebuilding, which is resulted in the initiation of the Wuppertal Urban Gardening Peace Garden. The Peace Garden initiative went on to catalyze new thinking about implementation of new peacebuilding methods in urban environments. Eke-Schneider has additionally published many articles, contributed scientific papers, and educated diverse groups in the field of nature, public spaces, and peacebuilding.
Burcu Köleli