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Guadalupe Elementary School, 700 sq. ft. mural, San Francisco, California, 2022.

Ross Holzman

Create Peace Project (CPP) was founded in May of 2008 by Ross Holzman in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to promote the practices of peace by raising the voices and sharing the visions of positive change from our youth using the arts. CPP was formed in response to the overwhelming amount of violence in the world, the violence and negativity streaming through media, coupled with the deterioration of arts programing in U.S. public schools.

We believe that the practice of peace starts with the individual, and from there, ripples out into the world.

Since 2008, CPP has included more than 60,000 youth from 300 schools in fifteen countries in our projects. Our work is designed to strengthen human connections, cultivate self-awareness, spread hope, and foster peace. The intention is to uplift and inspire our youth by working together to beautify our schools while having fun and spreading joy through the visual arts! CPP achieves its mission by reminding our youth that they matter and activating joyous feelings of self-worth using creativity.

Creative Collaboration
We use the practice of collaborative art-making to inspire community building, foster teamwork, and support meaningful practices of sharing and co-creation. Through collaboration, we focus on improving the peaceful communication and interpersonal skills of our participants. All CPP projects are designed to engage students in the entire process of designing, creating, and completing our creative experience together.

Sanchez Elementary School, mosaic in progress, San Francisco, California, 2022.

Positive Peace Practices 
We invite participants to actively engage in the practice of peace—being quiet, calm, and centered before we create. We teach breathing practices and invite positive visions of change, while also encouraging interactions and communications of kindness, respect, and acceptance. In this way, we invite participants to open their hearts, share their voices, and spread peace in the moment through our art-for-peace projects.

Our Philosophy
CPP is founded on the philosophy that the practice of creative self-expression is one of the greatest tools for fostering self-awareness. By making art, one shifts their attention from an outward orientation to an inward one. Taking the time to explore one’s feelings, thoughts, and emotions through self-expression supports the participant in being present with what is happening for them.

Being present is the act of being at peace. And so, before art-making, we sit together, breathe together, and share a moment of silence to reinforce this practice. When we are at peace with ourselves, we can be at peace with others, and thus at peace with the world around us. We believe that the practice of peace starts with the individual, and from there, ripples out into the world. It is our intention to extend this philosophy by encouraging visual art-making and the raising of self-awareness through both individual and collaborative arts projects around the topic of peace.

What We Offer
CPP focuses its efforts on working with youth ages five to eighteen but can work with people of all ages. Our large-scale, school-wide collaborative projects include the Peace Exchange, an international exchange of art and messages of peace between students of the world, and Banners for Peace, a collaborative painting project that brings students together to design, develop, and paint uplifting slogans on a giant canvas to hang in their school.

To learn more, visit our website createpeaceproject.org.