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Art blossoms as a language of peace in Cauca

9 March, 2026

During the third week of May, in the heart of the mountains of Cauca, girls, boys, young people, teaching artists, master artists, and educational communities brought the territories to life with their voices, dances, flutes, and drums.

The artistic showcases promoted by the Presidential Program Sounds for Peacebuilding – Zone 6 became powerful expressions of living memory, collective creation, and cultural recognition.

These artistic showcases have been consolidated as meaningful experiences and collective celebrations of what has been taking shape within educational institutions and in the communities where the Presidential Program Sounds for Peacebuilding has an impact. Through art as a language of social transformation, the pedagogical process materializes as a concrete commitment to peace, the recovery of ancestral knowledge, culturally grounded education, and community rootedness.

Through encounter and sound, the voices of the territories spoke in their own languages. They spoke through the body, through words, through traditional melodies, bambucos, instruments, soundscapes, landscapes, and colors.

“Many of our own traditions were disappearing, such as our mother tongue, music, dance, and other aspects. So this has become a way to revive, highlight, and promote our work,” said Luis Felipe Calambás Velasco, principal of the Mamá Manuela Educational Institution in the municipality of Silvia.

Throughout the week, five educational institutions led the Artistic Showcases within their own school settings, as the result of pedagogical moments and methodologies grounded in a territorial approach.

Each showcase was developed from the autonomy of the school-based processes, under the leadership of Teaching Artists and Knowledge Keepers, as well as the Manager and Territorial Support teams of Node 7. This took place within the framework of the implementation of this major cultural and educational initiative, made possible through the coordinated efforts of the University of Cauca and the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledges.

These spaces made it possible not only to highlight artistic achievements, but also to generate scenarios for intergenerational dialogue, where children were co-creators and became standard-bearers of the living expressions of their communities.

In addition, in an exemplary exercise of communication, two institutions stood out for documenting and narrating their own showcase experiences from a community-based perspective. Quintín Lame Educational Institution and La Playa Educational Institution independently undertook the audiovisual coverage of their artistic showcases, strengthening the territory’s narrative sovereignty and demonstrating that communication is also a tool for peace.

The Presidential Program Sounds for Peacebuilding – Zone 6 continues to strengthen its commitment to art and education from a rights-guarantee perspective. In this way, culture is understood as a powerful tool for social transformation, fostering, at its very roots, significant processes of reconciliation. Through the pedagogical strategy Weave–Braid–Link, the Zone 6 team promotes the strengthening of community bonds, the recognition of emotions and knowledge systems, territorial identity, and juntanza as a practice of coexistence. Through the Artistic Showcases, hope flourishes in contexts historically affected by conflict.

“Music invites us, music calls us and allows us to enjoy ourselves with others. Music, the drum, and the flute bring all people together, and that is where peace lies. Without music there is no life; that is the cycle of life and the guiding thread of our existence.”
Taita Samuel Morales, Knowledge Artist, Misak community of Silvia

In each territory, sound was more than music: it was symbol, encounter, and possibility. The girls and boys who sang, played, and danced not only expressed what they had learned, but also reminded us, with their strength and tenderness, that peace is also built with instruments in hand and hearts willing to listen.