Wall Displays Tiles of Peace Empowerment

Amid vicious violence and war across the globe, a small Berkeley activist group hopes to construct a segment of peace throughout national and international communities.

World Wall for Peace is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization that teaches nonviolence through a peace empowerment workshop. Focused in the creative arts, the program culminates in the production of a wall made of individually hand-painted ceramic tiles. Over 36,000 tiles make up the wall, which has 33 sections located in six states and four different countries.

Challenged by a sign on the street commanding her to "do something today for peace," the organization's founder Carolyna Marks set out to create the first peace wall during the height of the Cold War, 17 years ago.

"I realized that, if everyone could do something for peace, we could change the world," Marks says.

Five years and 3,000 tiles later, the wall was erected in Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in Berkeley. Not long after, Marks was invited to the former Soviet Union to build a wall in Moscow, says Lisa Grosch, one of the organization's board members. There, Marks worked with 7,000 children and developed the "peace empowerment process" which is now a central aspect of the organization.

"It was only after making the wall in Russia that the idea of a global project was born," Marks says. "Each of the walls built would only be parts of a greater wall that we hope to circle the earth with."

Today the organization has grown to include more educational outreach efforts. The peace empowerment process, according to the organization's Web site, is "a way of thinking, being and action that is taught through a series of integrative, experiential lessons." The group seeks to teach others that peace is proactive and not passive.

Education is led by a volunteer core trained by Marks and teaches nonviolence through a creative understanding of emotions and sources of conflict, Grosch says. This is accomplished through workshops in which members interact with students and encourage artistic endeavors, such as drawing and painting.

Anyone can get involved with the project, Marks says, even those who do not consider themselves "artistically inclined."

One such workshop was recently completed at Golden Gate Elementary School in Oakland, where a newly constructed wall was dedicated last week, Marks says. This wall was completed as a joint community effort between the organization, the elementary school and Downs Memorial United Methodist Church in Oakland.

Led by Reverend Kelvin Sauls, 15 church volunteers were trained for the first time last spring in the organization's empowerment process, then passing the message along to about 100 third and fourth- grade students for one hour a week for 10 weeks in a series of workshops. The weekly sessions allowed these children to better understand and express their emotions, Sauls says, and it also resulted in 400 painted tiles.

"It was a process with a lot of transformation and had a great impact," Sauls says. "The children reacted like kids do, first with apprehension but then with enthusiasm. They had fun, talking about what they think and how they feel about violence and peace in this world."

The workshop also provides a unique medium in which children's voices can be heard, Marks says.

"The children like it, because it gets them to talk about their feelings, something they don't get to do in any other way or place," she says. "Emotions aren't really part of the curriculum in school, and their only role models are often adults who are emotionally maladjusted themselves. So it's important for them to understand their feelings."

While students express their opinions vocally, they also use art as an outlet, painting and drawing while learning that, at the core of anger, violence and conflict, is fear. With this knowledge and creative experience they discover that "the art of every creative act is a union of differences and opposites" and can apply this knowledge to violence prevention in the future, Marks says.

Although approximately two-thirds of the wall has been painted by children like those at the Oakland elementary school, the World Wall for Peace involves many adults as well. The project needs people to actually do work on the wall and also help garner corporate grants to fund the project. The cost to produce each tile, from painting to blazing and installing it in the wall, is $25.

Marks says the process of making the tiles is even greater than the wall itself. The number of tiles on each wall can range from 300 to 1,000, Grosch says.

"It works out to be less, because we do it for love," Marks says.

Marks' backyard is where the majority of the preparation for the tiles takes place, Grosch says. She fires the tiles with her own kiln and is responsible for the operation during the summer. In the case of Golden Gate Elementary School, Marks spent the whole summer preparing the wall so that it could be dedicated this fall.

While the wall at the elementary school took several months to finish, Marks says the completion of walls is determined by the level of community input.

According to Marks, the only similarity between all the tiles for the peace walls is their dimension - six by six inches. Otherwise, people are free to individually handpaint the tiles with whatever design or feelings they wish to relay.

There are several wall sites throughout the Bay Area, with two in Berkeley and four now in Oakland. Such celebrities as Whoopie Goldberg contributed to the wall in Oakland at Jack London Square with a tile painting resembling a bird.

Striving to spread this peace power to all parts of the world, the organization's next installment will be in the Young Men's Christian Association facility in Jerusalem. With the erection of the painted wall, Marks says she hopes to bring some peace to the war-ravaged country.

"The painting of each tile is creating visions of peace," Sauls said. "It's a long term event - those tiles will stay for life as a monument to the peace empowerment process and will be something that the children painting the tiles will be able to show their own children."

Currently, there are also peace walls in China, Japan and the Netherlands.

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