Counteracting violence through music
Las Comunes | Peru, Lima
Women and young people stand up against violence affecting women and children by composing songs and rap music and writing lyrics. Their musical appeals are distributed via social media and aim at breaking up the patriarchal narrative. Las Comunes was founded in 2024 and is breaking new ground in violence prevention with this pilot project.
Five feminist activists have set an ambitious goal for themselves: they want to pick a new, unconventional way to break up the cycle of patriarchal violence against women and children that is deeply rooted and taken for granted by Peruvian society. They chose music as a means of communication for their message.
The initiators of the Las Comunes project can offer extensive professional experience in social work, communication, arts and “Educación Popular”. They built up their organization from scratch, from its foundation and evaluation for cooperating with various local organizations right up to development of the entire program.
They launched their first local activities in 2024. In El Agustinos, a city district of the Lima metropolitan area, the Las Comunes team organized a rap workshop for young people. Through the creation of their own rap music, the teenagers were given the opportunity to deal with the topic of patriarchal violence in a fun, playful way. In a further song workshop carried out especially for adult women, these wrote lyrics and composed their own songs featuring strategies to fight violence affecting women and children. Las Comunes records the music and publishes it on social media. The workshops’ participants can send out a clear message to their communities. This Las Comunes project is based on the “Educación Popular” strategy (popular education) that is widely used in Latin America to transfer knowledge with the aim of promoting social change.
Las Comunes’ development work and creative approach are in line with focus women’s strategic emphasis on increasing cooperation with young, not yet established organizations and giving innovative ideas a chance.
