This activity was inspired by this resource: View of Dolls4Peace Memorial | Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy  

By: Gabrielle Jacobs 

Peacebuilding is often framed as a large-scale issue requiring massive funding and high-level policy work and Organizations. Peacebuilding is typically viewed as a proactive response, or an effort after the fact, to global crises like war. This perspective overlooks the fact that conflict can occur anywhere. Peace is just as necessary when dealing with neighbors, friends, family, and educators. In many urban environments conflict is systemic and purposeful.  

Content:Click on this link to find out more background on the original Dolls4peace project 

The Resource (Content)	Where to Place It (Context)
This resource focuses on a grassroots initiative in Chicago designed to grapple with the effects of gun violence against Black communities. By centering the community’s voice and healing, this program accepts the reality that local healing is the only way to address a cycle of systemic trauma.	This resource is best placed in urban elementary or middle school settings, particularly in communities impacted by high levels of structural violence. It is effective in school and educational settings like Art or Social Studies classes.

Depending on the age group, the level of context and storytelling would change. Its most powerful placement is in informal contexts where students are given a third space to process. This allows the participants to separate from the strict lines of school-based freedom, where play is supervised and structured. The original use for this project was for a community in mourning, but this may apply to many communities.  

Implementation: Ways to use this resource 

In order to incorporate this resource, a classroom activity would have to be planned and implemented. 

The Lesson Plan:  

Contextualizing Violence: Students can participate in a storytelling circle or be given time to reflect on their own experiences in relation to violence and loss. 

Pedagogical Grounding: Such an implementation needs to be rooted in the concepts of Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Both are beneficial since they emphasize the importance of emotional security for the child, analyze the systemic patterns of trauma, and develop a community where the expressions of the participant can be validated as a form of resistance and healing. With restorative justice pedagogy, the educator ensures that this vulnerability can occur. 

Logistics and Materials: 

An educator should organize these into kits or stations to ensure a smooth flow. Materials used should have emotional connections to the students but could be anything. 

Common Supplies	Found Objects & Fabric
Acrylic paints and brushes  Fine point black drawing markers  Needles, yarn, and crochet hooks  Scissors and glue	Buttons, shells, and stones  Ribbons, string, costume jewelry  Lace, velvet, burlap, and satin swatches

The Creative Process:  

The teacher would explain physical act of wrapping/binding the dolls as a meditative practice for containing or holding a memory. The reflection should include the voice for their doll to express their personal journeys or thoughts on the process of community healing. This could be enacted with a small paragraph written by the participants.  

While the physical construction can be done in a single session, the full implementation, including the storytelling circle and the final reflection, should be structured over 3 to 4 separate classes. This prevents participants from becoming emotionally overwhelmed and allows for deep processing. This would also help remove any kind of time pressure, where students would feel rushed to finish their work.  

To make this into a collective project, the dolls and short explanations for each could be publicly displayed to memorialize this grief as a community. This final step is essential for Social Action Pedagogy, as it moves the art from a private experience to a public statement of peace and a demand for systemic change. 

Goal: Peace Education and skill development 

This project addresses Holistic Peace Education and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy. Students develop: 

• Knowledge: Understanding of structural violence and the historical context of their own communities. 

• Skills: Narrative expression through the arts and bonding in community settings. 

• Attitudes: Global agency and conflict competency in relation to community-based violence. 

By creating a “living memorial,” they learn that they are not just victims of their environment but active “creators” of peace and memory, as stated by Rochele Royster: 

Audience: The two stakeholders in this project are a local teacher History teacher in the NOVA area, and the administration at the Brockton Public school in Massachusetts. Both can benefit from this project because it provides an outline for educational activities in which students can gain autonomy of how they deal with violence. I will email these stakeholders a link to this post and website and specifically invite them to leave a comment regarding how they might adapt the wrap doll method for their specific student communities.