Factors of Sustainable Peace? Art Informing Policy-Making in European Integration’s Peace-Scapes (1957-2004)

In a current context increasingly dominated by overlapping elements of conflict and discrimination, it is imperative to examine the positive societal impact of key factors of peace sustainability. This paper aims to bridge this gap by addressing the study of factors of sustainable peace in the European integration process from 1957-2004. These are analysed though innovative insights expressed from the Arts (e.g. through poetry and the visual arts) and shared via Digital Humanities conceptual maps. The main sources to build these visualizations come from the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence (HAEU) and from the Churchill Archives on Contemporary History at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. The examined artistic and cultural reflections were developed in conversation with European policy-makers and diplomats engaged in consolidating peace-based constructions around evolving shared values and norms. The studied variables stand beyond strategic and geopolitical considerations and can help us shed light on the value of landscapes of diachronic peace emerging through the recovery of concepts coming from transnational cultural and Arts dialogues. In short, this paper aspires to elucidate: what constitutes the nature and texture of peace as part of a transnational integration process from the dialogues between artists and policy-makers from the interwar period to the present; how to investigate the neglected contribution of ideas from the Arts in peace-building and peace-keeping; and how to best share the resulting discursive and graphic conceptual maps coming from the recovery of Arts’ insights towards sustainable peace policy-making via Digital Humanities outputs.