Lansing Regional Sister Cities Commission Presents: Building Peace Through the Arts 

Join The Conversation to foster dialogue about utilizing the power of the arts to promote peace and understanding among world cultures.

Participants will represent a variety of interfaith, intercultural and international viewpoints. Conversations will be interspersed by music from our two classical artists.

The primary presenter will be Maestro Karim Wasfi, famed Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra conductor who witnessed the impact of music when he played it for 53 children, who were making their home in a Baghdad mosque after ISIS displaced them from Ramadi and Falluja. He will discuss art and peacebuilding and the importance of overcoming "the ugliness of killings by beauty, by music, by art and creativity".

Maestro Wasfi will be accompanied by Detroit concert pianist, composer and conductor Alvin Waddles, who will musically discuss Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's words. "Music is The universal language of all mankind”.

They will be joined in the conversation by Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Director of The MSU Muslim Studies Program, Pastor Byungman Park, New Hope Korean Baptist Church, moderator Barbara Roberts Mason and others.

The goal is to fill the audience with people who have stories to tell about their experiences with peace and the arts. Let us all be a part of this conversation.