Interconnected challenges raise fundamental questions about whether existing approaches to development remain fit for purpose in an increasingly uncertain world. Against this backdrop, the Development Studies Association's annual conference (2026) brought together over 500 researchers, practitioners and policymakers, in Dublin, to reflect on questions of adaptation, resilience and future directions. 

The past few years have been marked by a sharp rise in conflict and insecurity across the world. From the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, to protracted crises in Sudan and Myanmar, violent conflict continues to displace millions of people and fracture communities. Recent estimates, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggest that global conflict levels and forced displacement are among the highest seen in decades, with more than 120 million people displaced worldwide.  At the same time, these conflicts are unfolding alongside climate disruption, with communities increasingly navigating overlapping crises including food insecurity and economic instability that are stretching social, economic and institutional resilience to its limits.

Within this broader conversation, Sarah Huxley and Ian Thomas from the British Council's Research and Insight team convened a panel discussion on Arts, Culture, Conflict and Peacebuilding to explore a question that is often overlooked in development debates: what role can arts and culture play in building more peaceful and resilient societies? For Sarah, the answer lies in something simple but powerful: art helps people connect. It does this by creating spaces for dialogue and trust, which in turn help communities make sense of difficult experiences as they navigate healing and recovery. She drew on Johan’s Galtung concept of positive peace, which goes beyond simply ending conflict. More importantly, it is about creating inclusive spaces that enable people and communities to thrive. Ian brought another perspective to the conversation by focusing on local agency and the role of arts and culture in peacebuilding, security and development. He called for approaches that place local people and co-design at the centre of programmes and stressed the value of continuity as trust and social change take time and cannot be achieved through short-term projects alone. Both of their reflections pointed towards a vision of development that begins with people, their relationships, their creativity and their capacity to shape change from within their own communities. These are the principles that the British Council seeks to nurture through its work, as explored in a recent report on the role of culture in peacebuilding and conflict prevention. 

Listening is where connection begins: this idea surfaced repeatedly throughout the panel. Whether through music, community engagement or knowledge exchange, all the speakers demonstrated how listening can foster trust, enable meaningful participation and strengthen people's capacity to shape change within their own communities. The following sections reflect on three themes that brought this insight into sharp focus. 

Creating spaces for belonging

Development is often associated with economic growth and access to essential services. However, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argues in Development as Freedom that it is fundamentally ‘a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy’. While this may involve improving access to housing, education and healthcare, recent research on social inclusion suggests that development also encompasses people's ability to participate in social life and experience a sense of belonging. Despite their importance to wellbeing and quality of life, these dimensions are often more difficult to cultivate through policy interventions alone. Drawing on her research with a refugee choir in London, Cristina Flores from the University of Westminster argued that belonging begins with the opportunity to listen and to be heard. Her findings further demonstrated that both of these practices extend beyond spoken language. Through singing, shared emotions, laughter, silence, hugs and other everyday acts of care, choir members forged connections that transcended cultural and linguistic barriers. In doing so, they created the conditions for trust, belonging and what she described as ‘everyday peace’ to emerge. According to Cristina, the value of these spaces lay not in addressing the structural challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers directly, but in creating opportunities for trust, connection and belonging to take root. Yet if the foundations of connection and positive peace are built through listening, it is worth asking how we should account for its value within systems that often privilege what can be easily counted.  

Measuring what matters 

Katrin Schmidt, a creative and cultural consultant, explored this tension through findings from a multi-country British Council evaluation examining the contribution of arts and cultural relations programmes to social cohesion. Her presentation raised an important question: are our evaluation systems listening to the forms of change that matter most? Trust, belonging, dialogue and agency emerged often among the most meaningful outcomes of development work, yet these are often overlooked because they do not fit neatly within conventional monitoring frameworks. Her findings suggested that measuring impact is also an exercise in deciding whose experiences count and which forms of knowledge are heard. As the development sector increasingly embraces participatory and people-centred approaches, there may be a need to rethink not only how programmes are designed, but also how impact is understood and assessed. This challenge echoed one of the conference's central themes. If development is being reimagined, then perhaps the forms of evidence we value also need to evolve. Relational change is not always easily measured, yet it may be among the most important foundations of long-term peace and social cohesion.  

Building research policy and practice 

Listening alone is, however, not enough if knowledge remains confined to particular projects or institutions. Vana Filipovski, a cultural and peace researcher, extended this discussion by focusing on the movement of knowledge across different communities of practice. Drawing on insights from Imagining Peace, a platform she co-founded to document arts-based peacebuilding initiatives from around the world, she emphasised the importance of creating spaces where researchers, practitioners and policymakers can listen to one another's experiences and learn from diverse forms of knowledge. Her central argument was that knowledge becomes most valuable when it is shared and made accessible across these different spaces. Through her platform, she argued that creative practices such as participatory theatre, filmmaking projects and community arts initiatives in refugee settings can support dialogue, accountability and community-led transformation. While she positioned arts-based peacebuilding as a bridge between research, policy and practice, many of these outcomes unfold gradually and relationally, making them difficult to capture through conventional evaluation frameworks. Her contribution brought the discussion back to a question that surfaced repeatedly throughout the panel: how can we better listen to and value more relational forms of change? 

Conclusion 

Although the presentations drew on different contexts, from refugee choirs and social cohesion programmes to international peacebuilding initiatives and knowledge-sharing toolkits, they converged around a shared insight: meaningful change begins by listening. Listening to communities rather than speaking for them. Listening to experiences that are difficult to quantify. Listening across cultural, institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Arts and culture emerged as powerful spaces where such listening can take place. At a time when calls to reimagine development are growing louder, the panel suggested that arts and culture are not peripheral to peacebuilding. They are part of the foundations upon which peaceful societies are built. The challenge now is not whether arts-based approaches matter, but how we better support, integrate and evidence their contribution to lasting peace.