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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783205004 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect, Limited |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2015 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Journey of Art and Conflict
Weaving Indra's Net
By David Oddie
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-500-4
CHAPTER 1
Genesis, Ideas and Inspiration
'Arrow is exciting, especially as it is so apt for the times.' I nearly fell off my chair. These were the words of Desmond Tutu in reply to a spontaneous letter I had written him two weeks earlier. The idea of ARROW (Art: a Resource for Reconciliation Over the World) was my response to the fractured world in which we lived, and I asked myself what can I do?
At the time I was teaching on a BA Drama programme at University College Plymouth St Mark and St John (UCP Marjon), now the University of St Mark and St John. One cold, wet Sunday afternoon in December 2003 I found myself pacing up and down my comfortable apartment in Tavistock, Devon, looking out at the pouring rain as it swept across the rooftops and the ever-changing Dartmoor, now hidden in mist. I pondered the world in which we lived; the war in Iraq, the fallout from the 9/11 horror and racial tensions across the United Kingdom, which found particularly violent expression in my home town of Burnley in Lancashire a few years back. Indeed there were growing fears about emerging tensions in cities like Plymouth, for so long monocultural in make-up but now, like other towns and cities across the United Kingdom, living through significant demographic changes.
So I thought, instead of sitting around bemoaning the state of this turbulent world, why not, as an experienced arts educator, try and create an arts organisation that is committed to developing the arts as a way, a resource and language for reconciliation and the creative transformation of conflict? Why not build a global network of artists, educators, young people, organisations and institutions who shared this commitment, who wanted to explore and understand more deeply how the arts can help to build bridges across perceived boundaries and barriers, challenge prejudice, injustice and violent extremism in all its forms – from the greed of giant corporatism to religious intolerance and hatred?
I could think of several reasons why not! It was something of an irony that I was setting out to engage directly and creatively with conflict because for much of my life I have avoided it like the plague. Conflict literature identifies a number of ways in which people respond to conflict, ranging from the openly violent to 'the run a mile' school through gradations of accommodation, compromise and mature problem solving. I am not proud of my own track record, which has seen too much avoidance and accommodation for my own, and others', good. I have no doubt that, on a personal level, the idea symbolised for me a need to step closer to my own fear with creativity, honesty and humility.
When we survey the wider field and consequences of conflict, it is indeed tempting to retreat into a state of numbness; it all seems too vast and dispiriting. Pessimism, even cynicism, dominates our thinking, so we do nothing; as in the joke, it takes no pessimists to change a light bulb because 'it's probably screwed in too tight, I haven't got a ladder and the shops are probably shut now anyway'.
Part of our unease may be a response to the word conflict itself, which often evokes a knee-jerk reaction; we spontaneously put up our defensive shutters. Conflict in itself is a fact of life; it is necessary and healthy. A life without conflict would indeed be dull and probably excruciatingly boring. The word is rooted in the Latin, confligere, meaning to clash, collide or rub together. Rubbing together can be fun and productive, a celebration of difference and diversity! It can also be hurtful and destructive. Nic Fine and Fiona Macbeth use the metaphor of fire to illustrate the potential of conflict to provide energy, warmth and creativity, on the one hand, and pain, destruction and distress on the other (Fine and Macbeth, 1992:19). Crisis often arises from conflict. There is a Chinese symbol for crisis that includes within it the concept of opportunity, and with opportunity comes hope.
Another question arose: 'Who am I to embark on such an ambitious journey?' I heard an answer in words attributed to Nelson Mandela, 'Who are you not to?' I came up with the acronym ARROW – Art: a Resource for Reconciliation Over the World – a modest little title. I felt uncomfortable with the name at first, but several people remarked that it seemed to work. Using the word 'reconciliation' was inspired by my life-long admiration of Desmond Tutu. I thought his idea and Mandela's idea to introduce a Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa was visionary. Tutu himself had referred to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee as a platform on which people shared and listened to each other's stories. I thought, 'But that's what we do as artists!' So I wrote to him. I was surprised and delighted when Desmond Tutu expressed his personal support. My first reaction was to think, 'Blimey (or words to that effect!), I've actually got to do it now'.
However, before blindly setting out to sea, in what could turn out to be choppy, if not stormy waters, I thought it would be wise to reflect and maybe consult some already existing maps. Among some of my academic friends the word 'reconciliation' has had a bad press. It is one of those words that is hijacked by those in power to demonstrate how much 'progress' has been made on a political level, whereas in grassroots reality little may have changed. The term is too frequently linked to a 'peace at any price' plea, and peace without justice is hollow and short-lived. Desmond Tutu had a profound understanding of this, demonstrated in the tact, sensibility and skill with which he chaired sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa. Some argue, in retrospect, that the outcomes from the committee's proceedings were flawed: too many people who committed serious criminal acts were never held to account. I would suggest that without Mandela's and Tutu's reconciliatory approach the country would have been torn apart in a catastrophic civil war.
Reconciliation was not an easy option; it was a tough, ongoing process grounded in the real experience and pain of people's lives. It is not the same thing as forgiveness: the two things may be linked and one may be the midwife to the other, but they remain distinct. Reconciliation is often about how we live together without killing, abusing or beating each other. Tutu often referred to the concept of Restorative Truth, truth that acknowledges the painful past but aspires to the horizon of a possible future beyond an understandable and justifiable, gut-level urge for revenge. Our grandchildren will inherit and inhabit an increasingly shared planet, whether we like it or not.
Established religion too often demands that people in desperate emotional situations should forgive, but there is no 'should-ness' about forgiveness; it can only arise after a journey of acceptance and real pain; it needs time. There is no panacea for the mistrust and hatred built up over years between rival ethnic groups, whether in the Balkans or in Northern Ireland. It needs space, time and endless efforts at both political and grassroots levels. ARROW's mission would be to explore how the arts can provide such a space and make a specific contribution to facilitate shifts in understanding and awareness towards this end.
I also trawled through the expansive and growing literature on conflict. Conflict in itself is a fact of life. We are different and conflict is a healthy part of the desire to express our different thoughts, feelings and needs. It is when these needs, or perceived needs, clash that problems arise and our coping strategies and skills are challenged. There are several theories regarding the causes of conflict, many of them overlapping, from Principled Negotiation Theory, Identity Theory, Intercultural Miscommunication Theory and others. Again, what struck me was the resonance between these ideas and the thinking underlying my work as an applied theatre practitioner. For example, Human Needs Theory suggests that conflict arises from unmet, core human needs – a proposition that has motivated much inspirational work in the field of applied theatre.
For many of my generation, Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model was a popular guide. We have a basic need for food, shelter, water etc. If these needs are not met then we cannot function effectively. If these needs are met then we can focus on other needs, such as safety and security. Similarly, if these needs are met, we can focus on the need for belonging, as expressed through family and intimate relationships. And so it goes on through our need for self-esteem and self-actualisation. The model implies a vertical, hierarchical structure, though Maslow himself never posited the restrictive pyramid most associated with his ideas.
The Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef uses a horizontal model of human needs. This model provides a framework through which we can identify and explore ways in which the arts may be integrated into the diverse and complex web of human needs as a whole:
The traditional concept of poverty is limited and restricted, since it refers exclusively to the predicaments of people who live below a certain income threshold. This concept is strictly economistic. It is suggested here that we should speak not of poverty, but of poverties. In fact any fundamental need that is not adequately satisfied reveals a human poverty. Some examples are: poverty of subsistence (due to insufficient income, food, shelter etc.), of protection (due to bad health systems, violence, arms race etc.), of affection (due to authoritarianism, oppression, exploitative relations with the natural environment, etc.), of understanding (due to poor quality of education), of participation (due to marginalisation of and discrimination against women, children and minorities), of identity (due to imposition of alien values upon local and regional cultures, forced migration, political exile, etc.). But poverties are not only poverties. Much more than that, each poverty generates pathologies. This is the crux of our discourse.
(Max-Neef & Ekins, 1992:200)
In turn the pathologies generate conflict, which in turn may generate violence and further misery. Several conflict writers place human need at the centre of their thinking. Diane Francis, highlighting the priority to embrace the needs of all parties in a conflict setting, writes:
Thus it becomes possible for the conflict to be viewed inclusively and seen as a shared problem rather than in terms of opposition. Such shifts in perception are seen as possible if one assumes not only the existence of universal human needs but a human capacity for empathy for making the imaginative leap from what is needed for our own well being to an understanding of others' needs.
(Francis, 2002:69)
In thinking through the underlying purposes of ARROW I came across the writing of a prominent mediator and writer in the United States, John Paul Lederach, whose work became a major source of inspiration for making connections between the respective work and ideas of conflict practitioners and arts educators.
Lederach suggests that we need to reconsider our priorities in approaching conflict, 'away from a concern with the resolution of issues and towards a frame of reference that focuses on the rebuilding of relationships' (Lederach, 1997:26). He reminds us of the self-evident truth that conflict is fundamentally about human beings in a state of relationship with each other – however tenuous or vulnerable.
His call for innovative approaches to relationship building, at all levels of society, acknowledges and seeks to work creatively with the very real, 'gut level' pain, fear, anger, hatred and mistrust experienced by people within a conflict setting. This resonated with the arts education principles and processes that had been the focus of most of my working life. Lederach writes:
Reconciliation as a concept and a praxis endeavours to reframe the conflict so that the parties are no longer preoccupied with focussing on the issues in a direct cognitive manner. Its primary goal and key contribution is to seek innovative ways to create a time and a place, within various levels of the population, to address, integrate and embrace the painful past and the necessary shared future as a means of dealing with the present.
(Lederach, 1997:35)
Desmond Tutu echoes this in sentiments expressed in a letter to ARROW, 'Art can help us deal with the traumas of the past and give hope for the future'.
The interweaving and shifting focus of the time-elements of past, present and future are crucial to peacebuilding. Lederach uses a set of 'polychronistic' time lenses, taken from anthropologist Edward Hall, to explore the capacity to work on 'multiple things at a time' (Hall, 1984). Lederach writes:
A polychronic view of reconciliation suggests the metaphor of theatre and stage. We create a place where the energies of Truth, Justice, Mercy and Peace are given life and interact. We need this kind of image to help us see interconnectedness, simultaneity and interaction as necessary in a polychronic understanding of reconciliation and time.
(Lederach, 1999:80)
I liked this idea of reconciliation as a dance involving these crucial energies and tensions interacting, weaving in and out of each other, balancing, holding, supporting and challenging each other's claim to be centre stage at any point in the dance.
Lederach's emphasis on the centrality of relationship as a key feature in working with issues arising from conflict was endorsed for me in research undertaken by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett for their book, The Spirit Level. Their extensive research demonstrated that inequality within societies, rather than overall levels of wealth, is a key determinant of such outcomes as mental illness, trust, violence and health:
The problems in rich countries are not caused by the society being rich enough (or even by being too rich) but by the scale of material differences between people within each society being too big. What matters is where we stand in relation to others in our society [...] In more unequal societies children experience more bullying, fights and conflict. And there is no better predictor of later violence than childhood violence.
(Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009:25,139)
This endorsed Lederach's call for innovative approaches to relationship building at all levels of society and his observation, endorsed by writers in the social sciences, that conflict is manifested and needs to be addressed at personal, relational, cultural and structural levels (see Thompson, 1997; Lederach, 2003:23). This perception is also echoed in the words of the Indian writer J. Krishnamurti:
To be is to be related, and there is no such thing as living in isolation. It is the lack of right relationship that brings about conflict, misery and strife; however small our world may be, if we can transform our relationship in that narrow world, it will be like a wave outward all the time.
(Lutyens, 1973:22)
There is also a need to be ethically consistent in our attitudes and behaviours at all these levels. We undermine our credibility if we seek to develop national, community cohesion policies, on one hand, and at the same time address international problems on the other by bombing communities, such as Iraq, into oblivion.
Conflict Transformation
In looking at longer-term responses to conflict, the term 'transformation' is increasingly favoured over that of 'resolution'. 'Resolution' seeks to find a solution to immediate problems, and in some situations this may be what is required: there is a problem and it needs fixing. Unfortunately, however, the deeper, underlying problems may continue to re-emerge time and again. As Scilla Elworthy and Gabrielle Rifkind observe:
Whether we are considering Iraq, al-Qaeda, Chechnya or the Middle East, it is clear that simply trying to hit back and destroy the 'enemy', the 'terrorists' or the political opponents provides only short-term solutions.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Journey of Art and Conflict by David Oddie. Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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