The speakers invite you to participate in a vital conversation at the systemic level (not individual problematising), beyond blame and shame, beyond discounting or avoiding into collective reflection, grieving, integration and responsibility, so we can we can hold ourselves and each other in the shared purpose to bring restorative justice beyond unconscious co-option into domination systems, and more towards the transformative life-serving consciousness it truly can be.
"I have a powerful urge to communicate, ....but I find the distance between us insurmountable."
Pastor Paul in Lukas Hanths play 'The Christians'.
"When the distance between us seems insurmountable, I feel a powerful urge to communicate."
Sarri Bater is a founder of OpenEdge Transforming Conflict. She is a scholar-practitioner in Conflict Transformation, and she holds a consciousness of nonviolent communication (NVC) as a foundation of her approach. She holds a First Class Honours Degree in Peace Studies, an MSc with distinction in Transitional Justice, and an LLM in Human Rights, and training in many other processes and practices. For 25 years she has lived and worked in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Europe, the UK and Northern Ireland, with diverse engagement in the field (including restorative dialogue projects; election monitoring; University lecturing; supporting refugee charities; organisational transformation; Truth and Reconciliation projects; detached youth work; in Maximum Security Prison; Gender and Sexual Rights education; Racial Equality Council officer on Hate Crimes; participating in UN Human Rights Council Sessions; running local learning and practice groups; independent advisor to police and government on reforming ‘community and race relations’; school and community mediation projects.) She has a passion for the relationship between personal transformation and transforming systemic and structural violence. She also specialises in ‘identity and difference’ conflict. She is committed to learning, embodying and developing re-humanising cultures, practices and systems as an alternative to existing systems for human organising. Contact: sarri@openedge.org.uk
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
Christina De Angelis is a practitioner and consultant, mediator and systemic conflict coach. She works to help people find effective and non-violent ways to transform their conflicts and create systems to respond to crises that are aligned with the values of nonviolence and restorative justice. As a social worker with over 20 years experience in family systems, child protection, education and mental health, she continues to bring her systemic lens to all her work through the dual social work perspective of seeing people within their environments. She was a Rotary World Peace Fellow at the Institut de Sciences Politiques, Paris and the Peace Studies department of the University of Bradford where she completed a First Class Masters in Conflict Resolution. As a mediator since 2007, she has specialised in family and community mediation and restorative justice practices. She spent over nine months in Brazil studying the origins, methodology and use of Restorative Circles. She was awarded a double Masters in Intercultural mediation from the Université de Lille, France and the Universitatea Babes-Bolyai, Romania. After several years of extensive study of restorative justice theory and practice, Christina has applied Restorative Circles in her own local community in France and accompanies families, and organisations in the creation of their own restorative systems. For the last 15 years, Christina has facilitated trainings and workshops on non-violence, conflict transformation, reconciliation, unconscious racism, non-violent communication, mediation and restorative justice in various countries. Contact: christina@openedge.org.uk
The presentation's illustrations were created by Willemijn Lambert. Check her works here: www.drawin.ink