Building a Culture of Peace through Non-Formal Education: The Case of Colombia's Memory Museum

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article explores Colombia’s Memory Museum as a form of non-formal peace education in a conflict-affected society. Since the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and FARC, many initiatives have been established to foster reconciliation and sustainable peacebuilding. One such initiative is the Colombian Memory Museum. Through a qualitative case study approach involving in-depth interviews, document analysis and digital artefacts, this study explores the potential of the museum to contribute to building a culture of peace in Colombia. The study is guided by two questions: What possibilities can non-formal peace education strategies like Colombia’s Memory Museum offer to construct a culture of peace in conflict-affected settings like Colombia? What lessons could be learned from Colombia’s Memory Museum that might be useful for educators in other contexts facing conflict and division? Organized into five themes, findings indicate that the museum aligns with the construction of a culture of peace by helping in the rejection of violent conflict to solve differences, fostering self-reflection as a strategy to resist structural and cultural violence, promoting horizontality, presenting multiple views of reality, and working toward social justice in the form of symbolic reparation. It is expected that the analysis presented in this paper is meaningful for South Korean researchers and educators who aim to employ new forms of non-formal education to promote a more sustainable culture of peace.