The peace gallery you can see below is the product of a photovoice project conducted during the Toronto Peace Academy’s 2026 Foundations of Peace: Youth Day Camp.
Photovoice is a participatory action research method developed in 1992 in Yunnan, China by 62 local women, Dr. Caroline Wang, and Mary Ann Burris.¹ Photovoice is now practiced around the world in all kinds of settings with all kinds of people. In our case, we used photovoice to explore the meaning of peace.
Twelve peace camp participants (between 14-17 years old) were provided disposable cameras to take photos of how they see peace. At the end of the one-week peace camp, the photos were developed and participants wrote captions describing the 5-7 photos they selected and the significance to peace of each one. The participants then sorted all photos into themes and selected a primary photo to enlarge and anchor the seven themes displayed below.
It is our hope that these perspectives can broaden your understanding of peace, inspire you to preserve the conditions for youth to experience peace, and pursue policy changes that make peace possible for all people.
Youth Perceptions of Peace
Peace,
Joshua Lash-Ballew
Toronto Peace Academy
an initiative of Toronto Chinese Mennonite Church
1. Wang, C. C. (2022). The tai qi of photovoice. Health Promotion Practice, 23(2), 205-210.
Peace Gallery
Click through the seven themes listed below to view the photovoice project.
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible through the generosity of City Seminary of New York’s Ministry in the City HUB, the support of the Community Research Ethics Office, our summer interns, Serena Zhao and Jadon Yu, hired through the federal government’s Canada Summer Jobs program, and especially Annie Chau, who had the idea for this project and guided us all the way through it. We owe the creation of the physical Peace Gallery to the work of Brian Quan and Christen Kong.
This research project was approved by the Community Research Ethics Office (App #530). See our About page for the Toronto Peace Academy Territorial Acknowledgement.
Toronto Peace Academy is an initiative of Toronto Chinese Mennonite Church.
Toronto Peace Academy is an initiative of