With support from the California Arts Council, Create Peace Project will amplify its impact on youth development and community building through facilitating the creation of eight student-led murals within elementary schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in the 2025-2026 academic year. Over a focused 4-6 week period for each mural, our comprehensive program will immerse the entire student body of each participating school in dynamic creative arts and peace education initiatives. This deeply collaborative approach, expertly guided by resident artist Ross Holzman and his team, will empower students, educators, and the school community to actively participate in every stage of the mural process, from initial concept to final execution, fostering a sense of ownership and collective achievement. The resulting large-scale artworks will serve as enduring visual testaments to collective creativity and strengthened community spirit.
Create Peace Project’s core programs are the peace Exchange, Banners for Peace, Community Murals, the Singing Tree Project, Peace Flags, Peace Media Project, and More Love. More Peace. The Peace Exchange is an international exchange of art and messages of peace using where students are asked to artistically express their visions for peace on postcards that are used in a global cross-cultural exchange. Banners for Peace is a collaborative painting workshop focused on promoting positive messages and uplifting art into the schools on giant canvases. Community murals transform school yards and barren walls into educational and inspirational works of art. Many of these murals are youth inspired, bringing entire communities together to create a cohesive vision of peace for the entire school population to engage. The Singing Tree Project is a STEM visual arts and writing workshops for students ages 8+. Students work together to create a leaf for the school tree mural to share their individual vision of peace with the school community. Peace Flags are a visual art activity for school children of all ages. Students are prompted to create their vision of peace on piece of fabric. The pieces are sewn together to create a finished flag that is hung in the school. Our Peace Media project translates these works of art onto traditional advertising spaces, to promote the visions of our youth to the general public. More Love. More Peace is a cross-cultural, virtual education platform launched in 2020 to provide students with a space to share their vision of peace through art.

