REstART 2021

16:00-16:15 Welcome & house rules & speed-dating
16:15-16:35 Setting the scene on arts and restorative justice (Lindsey Pointer & Mashaun Ali Hendricks, USA)
16:35-16:55 Pitch by 4 artists using collaborative methodologies in their performances:

• Michael Douglas Kollektiv (Germany) on public dialogues on polarisation, hate and violence
• Thinking Acts (Scotland) & Chorus (Greece) on collecting stories from opposing groups and the chorus element
• International Society for Arts and Culture (Slovakia) on storytelling and improvisation with marginalized communities
• ApsArt Center for Theater Research (Serbia) on participatory drama workshops with prisoners

16:55-17:10 Comfort break
17:20-18:00 Interactive dialogue& open discussion

18:00-19:00 Break
19:00-20:00 Discussion with the director(s) of the film "Another Justice" (Chloé Henry-Biabaud & Isabelle Vayron, France)

Lindsey Pointer & Mashaun Ali Hendricks (USA)

Lindsey Pointer is the Associate Director of the National Center on Restorative Justice at Vermont Law School. Together with our Board member Brunilda Pali, she is currently editing the special issue of The International Journal of Restorative Justice, entitled “Advancing Restorative Justice through Art" (forthcoming in 2022).  She is also one of the coordinators of the "Reimagining Justice - Restorative Justice Art Gallery", an initiative  launched by the National Center on Restorative Justice to collect artworks of all mediums during the international RJ Week. She is the author of Wally and Freya, a children’s picture book on restorative justice (forthcoming in 2022).

Mashaun Ali Hendricks is a restorative justice practitioner, visual artist, and entrepreneur based in Chicago.  He is a radical RJ practitioner and educator with over 10 years of experience. He has worked with Chicago Public Schools to transform approaches to classroom management and discipline. He has worked with the Chicago Police Department to train community-engagement officers to hold peace circles and imagine “restorative policing” strategies. He has worked with Cook County Circuit Courts to operate its first Restorative Justice based Community Court. As a visual artist, Mashaun uses the media of design, text, wheat-paste, apparel, concept stores, and installations. He creates artworks and projects to amplify the philosophy of RJ and engage people in possibilities RJ creates.  As an entrepreneur, Mashaun owns the streetwear brand TRAP HOUSE CHICAGO, LLC.

Image: Drawing "The Goddess of Time" by young artists Bourama Diarra, Giulia Villa, and Alessia Carboni (Sardinia, Italy) who won the 2020 "Reimagining Justice" art contest .

Michael Douglas Kollektiv (Germany) - Douglas Bateman, Karen Gallagher & Michael Maurissens

The Michael Douglas Kollektiv (MDK) has experience in research of collaborative artistic productions and in development of collective participatory methodologies for the creation of their performances. Together with conflict specialist and choreographer Dana Caspersen (USA), MDK produced two public dialogues where choreography and conflict resolution meet: “The Polarity Party” and “The Exchange”, dedicated to the understanding of polarization and hate and the prevention of violence. In these interactive events, there is no performance and no spectators, instead simple actions such as walking, sitting and talking become tools for reflection and interaction as the participants consider: What is our role in the creation or unbuilding of systems of polarization and violence?

Thinking Acts (Scotland) and Chorus (Greece) -  Effie Samara & Virginia Vassilakou

Thinking Acts and Chorus lead “Poetic Constitutions: Caring Europe”, a project that focuses on accessing a wide sample of the community, especially those suffering marginalisation through ethnic, economic or educational disadvantage, by asking questions on identity, solidarity and shared citizenship as people of Europe. Its goal is to create and sustain a new artistic form of performance activism based on embodied struggles, allegiance and solidarity amongst people and enhance the idea of community, whose aim will be towards a restorative and reconciliatory practice, and build transformative critical resources and a new artist's toolkit for sustainable and ethical advancement of cultural justice. In practice, the project collects stories of opposing and conflicting groups (through consultations, discussions, and interviews by the playwright), which are used to draft the script of the play. A chorus (consisting of members of the community) is added to the play, as a form of community activation and engagement.

International Society for Arts and Culture (Slovakia) - Hon Chong & Olivia Biskupska

The International Society for Arts and Culture (ISAC) aims at creating a creative, progressive, inspiring, enriching and empowering society through arts and culture. Among other projects, its Funnylicious Improv Theater (Slovakia’s first English language improv comedy troupe and training center) produced “Our Stories: An Improvised Play”, an international performing art project merging the artistic means of improvisation and oral storytelling. The idea is very simple, to combine the power and vulnerability of personal true stories with the collaborative, spontaneous, and creative art form of improvisational theatre. Up to two stories of ordinary people from diverse backgrounds (e.g. minorities, marginalized communities, young people) are told live and an improvised play is then performed inspired by the stories told. No two shows are the same. ISAC has another production, “Story Nights”, a storytelling community dedicated to sharing true stories for inspiring, healing, transforming and entertaining people in several cities in Europe and Asia.

ApsArt Center for Theater Research (Serbia) - Aleksandra Jelić

ApsArt promotes the idea of ​​theater as a means of personal development and social action by practicing different forms of participatory art that involve citizens in creative processes. It plays in prisons, schools, streets, parks, hospitals, kindergartens, i.e. wherever life is. Actors do not play for the audience, but with the audience. Among others, ART PACKAGE is a series of drama workshops with prisoners in male/female and juvenile prisons, specially designed to connect personal experiences of prisoners with art pieces from the National Museum in Belgrade. Art pieces are projected on the walls of the prison during the theatre workshops so that prisoners can see them. Drama workshop facilitators use participatory drama methods adapted to the confined context of prison. The theater performances created with prisoners are later performed in different communities and institutions open for collaboration of this kind and prisoners are finally able to visit the National Museum (sometimes for the first time in life). This project is done thanks to the collaboration between ApsArt, the museum, the prison and the university (i.e. students of art history).

Isabelle Vayron - After studying literature and then journalism, she became a photo reporter, among others for the Sygma agency. She was the photographer of the Paris-Kabul expedition in 2003. She then worked as a co-director on Yann Arthus Bertrand's 6 billion Others and HUMAN projects. Since 2011, she has been making social documentaries for France 3, Arte, Public Senat, LCP, France 2, Planète, RTBF, RTS . She is mainly interested in the themes of justice and the environment.

Chloé Henry-Biabaud  is a film director and a cameraman. She traveled a lot as a with her parents because they have often moved. Later as a young adult she continued to travel with some of her friends. Through these journeys she met incredible people. This is why she decided to work for sharing the amazing stories she has heard all around the world. She encountered Isabelle while working for Yann Arthus-Bertrand on the project "6 Billion Others" (later re-titled as “7 Billion Others”) more than 12 years ago and they became close friends. They met Agnes Fury and Leonard Scovens together during shooting the film “Human” for Yann Arthus Bertrand and they decided to make a film about them. 
She has made documentaries on number of different subjects, including culture, history, and travelling. Her main focus is usually on resilience and people who have overcome great difficulties to turn it into a strength, as for example in one of her other films, “Les dames de la Colline”, which talks about a woman survivor of the genocide in Rwanda.