Basic tools, methods and approaches for dealing with group and relational conflicts.
Conflict in our groups is common. It’s part of the group’s and relationships life cycle. It can be painful and damaging, undermining our efforts and draining our energy. But it can also become a source of learning, evolution and a basis for deepening trust and relationships between us.
Learning to deal with conflicts, developing the skills to find the transformative potential within them, and supporting the group and people to learn and evolve in the process can deeply empower our work for social change.
Our work together sits within a global and historical system of interlinking forms of oppression. These shape the material, relational and psychological conditions that influence every one of us. In order to not reproduce harmful patterns, a systemic perspective on conflict is additionally needed.
This strand will offer methods, basic skills, frameworks and tools for transforming and dealing with conflicts, turning them into opportunities for deeper understanding and learning. We’ll learn how to support the building of shared understanding, how to access emotions and inner experience, to hold such spaces more safely, and attend to the healing involved in handling conflict.
A variety of approaches and methods are needed to be able to work with conflict well. Specific interventions and tools to use will depend on the situation, phase of the conflict, organising culture, available resources, quality of relationships, social positioning of people involved. Therefore, there isn’t a one-size-fit all solution. This course will combine different approaches and aim at enabling participants to experience a range of different methods that can be further developed within the specific organising context they are brought to, focusing also in the basic skills to stay in and manage conflicts in a way the can evolve.
The approach that the training team will take, will be:
Some of the topics that the course will cover are:
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone with experience in socially engaged action addressing ecological, political and social justice issues. We embrace a broad definition of activism and/or social action, including: Resistance – action preventing further damage to ecosystems and social justice; Renewal – action focused on developing and creating alternatives for healthier societies and communities; and Building Resilience – action supporting increased resilience in communities to weather the uncertain times ahead.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
Contact us
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Location:
Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación
