Established in 2018, the Kuma International Summer School is the first educational program dedicated exclusively to contemporary artistic practices emerging from contexts of conflict, trauma, displacement, and post-war societies. Rooted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the program focuses particularly on artistic responses to the political violence of the 1990s following the collapse of Yugoslavia, including war, genocide, exile, and their long-term social and psychological consequences.
The 2023 edition brought together participants from different countries to engage directly with artists, scholars, curators, and cultural practitioners from the region and the diaspora. Through lectures, workshops, discussions, field visits, and collective exchange, participants explored how contemporary art can address memory, violence, identity, migration, and reconciliation within post-conflict contexts.
Alongside the educational program, participants also explored Sarajevo’s layered historical and cultural landscape, engaging with the city as both a living archive and a space shaped by ongoing social and political transformation.
As part of the Summer School, participants attended selected lectures organized by Kuma’s long-standing partner WARM Academy, an international educational platform dedicated to contemporary conflict reporting, photography, documentary practices, and investigative storytelling. Through this collaboration, participants were introduced to interdisciplinary perspectives on war reporting, memory, visual culture, and the ethics of representation in contemporary conflict zones.