On 22 July 2004,  Ballerina Miyako Yoshida was designated named UNESCO Artist for Peace. Her role is to act as a spokesperson for raising awareness of the role of the arts and more particular of Dance in promoting peace, tolerance and mutual understanding, within the framework of UNESCO’s cultural programme “arts education”.

Born and trained in Tokyo, Miyako Yoshida started ballet dancing at the age of nine. She wan the Lausanne Prize of the Prestigious 11^th Prix de Lausanne in 1983. Miyako Yoshida studied at the Royal Ballet School as a scholarship student and entered in 1984 the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (now the Birmingham Royal Ballet ) in recommendation of the Artistic Director Peter Wright. She was promoted to Principal in 1988 and was chosen as the Dancer of the Year by the dance magazine, Dance and Dancers in 1991. In 1995 she was transferred to The Royal Ballet as Principal. Her repertory includes the leading roles in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, La Fille mal garée, Giselle, Coppelia, Nutcracker, Don Quixote, Prince of the Pagodas, Cinderella, Ondine, Daphnies and Choroe, Raymoda Act III, The Dream, Sylvia, Theme and Variations, Tchaikovsky pas de deux, Birthday Offering, The Firebird, Symphonic Variations, Elite Syncopations, The Snow Queen, Paquita etc…

She has received the Global Award in 1989, the Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists of the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture (1997), and the E. Nakagawa (1995), A.Tachiba (1996) and C.Hattori(1998) awards, and the Art Encouragements Prize for the Ministry of Education, Science, Sport, and Culture in Japan in 2001.