Not all conflict is damaging. When it engages with unjust systems, conflict can be transformative, creating space for debate among various voices and viewpoints and catalyzing positive change. Provocative creative actions by designers, artists, and activists have brought new attention to entrenched issues. Nadine Bloch and Andrew Boyd assembled the Beautiful Trouble Toolbox, a set of core tactics, principles, and theoretical concepts by more than seventy artists and activists that can be used in imaginative ways to propel creative activism. In New York, the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural makes a strong visual statement of protest against police killings of Black Americans and in affirmation of the value of Black lives, as do similar murals in communities across the country and around the world. As an alternative to confrontational street protest, London’s Art the Arms Fair presents art events that expose the international arms trade and expand the discourse on its role in contemporary society. With a view to harsh realities on the ground, one art collective incorporates discarded bullet casings into woven rugs called Maps (Bullet Rug Series), which offer evidence of international arms-trafficking routes, secret military interventions, and lethal weaponry design. And, as Caroline O’Connell explains, in Northern Ireland during the period known as the Troubles, collaborative textile making was harnessed to express a united stance for peace by women from the communities on both sides of the conflict.

Visual symbols can activate global movements by communicating across divides. Lee Davis writes about an effort to create a set of universal graphic symbols in the late 1960s, with the goal of reducing confusion and conflict brought on by increasing globalization. More recently, a Uruguayan graphic designer created a new World Peace Symbol, devoid of the problematic meanings associated with previous signs. Another visual design, the Extinction Symbol, is simple, replicable, and easily deployed in a multitude of contexts. Incorporating the image of an hourglass, it signifies the urgent need for action in the face of accelerating plant and animal species extinctions.