Introducing Artegenesis
How a collective creative experience can continue to move through a community.
The creative ripple
Artegenesis is the emergent phenomenon described in Benjamin Swatez’s doctoral research: a potentially sustained and self-propagating ripple at the convergence of expressive arts, salutogenesis and conflict transformation. The inquiry follows what happens both during collective creation and after the mural is complete.
A question grounded in practice
The dissertation asks how expressive arts-based crisis intervention community murals can mobilize health-generating resources and conflict transformation in contexts of active conflict. Ethnographic field relationships, arts-based research and phenomenological interviews inform case studies in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine.
People carry the work forward
In this account, the mural remains a public anchor while community Créateurs, Aesthetic Witnesses and local change agents contribute to subsequent meaning-making and creative action. A witness may become a maker; a participant may initiate a new process.
What the evidence can say
The study presents qualitative, contextual accounts. It does not establish a universal causal effect, a clinical treatment protocol or quantitative neurological outcomes. Further comparative and mixed-method research is proposed.
Source: Benjamin J. Swatez, Artegenesis Phenomenon, European Graduate School of Expressive Arts, March 31, 2026. Editorial introduction based on the supplied dissertation and updated CV.