Towards a Culture of Peace: A Civic Conversation

Come along and participate, creatively and hopefully, in the beginnings of an important conversation in these turbulent and troubling times.

Being at peace – within ourselves and with others – feels like it is increasingly challenging in today’s world. For we are living in powerful times – times of existential uncertainty, shifting norms and deep societal dis-ease, within and between communities and nations. Ours is an era of deepening cultural fragmentation, widening economic and social inequity, wars and rumours of wars, and ever more apparent ecological and environmental destruction. In a world that is more connected, technologically at least, than ever before, we are witnessing, paradoxically, a growing sense of separation, isolation and polarisation.

How should we be and what should we be doing together in constructive resistance to so much that is wrong with the world whilst also taking heart from hopeful signs and diversely wise initiatives?   In what ways can we discern the potential within these powerful times for what Seamus Heaney called ‘moral and imaginative quickening’ – for a shift towards peaceful behaviours and ways of relating that are for the common good? How can people be encouraged to find, as Carl Rogers put it decades ago, that “there are ways of being that do not involve power over persons and groups”, ways of building “harmonious community”?

Connecting and being in a collaborative relationship with other people is helpful. And participating in mutually attentive conversation is one wise and potentially transformative response to the challenges we face – a small act of creative transgression. This civic gathering is intended as one such ‘small act’ – an opportunity for those present to participate, creatively and hopefully, in the beginnings of a conversation about growing a ‘culture of peace’, locally, nationally and globally.

The gathering will be co-hosted and facilitated by Maria Kontarini, a former diplomat in Bosnia and with NATO, and Denis Stewart, a member of the International Futures Forum (IFF). Maria is a person-centred practitioner in a variety of fields, including psychotherapy and politics and is co-convenor of a cross-national initiative, A Peace Project in the 21^st Century.  Now in his post-professional phase of life, Denis is an occasional convener of conversations in civic spaces, both physical and virtual.

The conversation will be informed/stirred by a few brief provocations, including from Mary McManus, Regional Manager of Living Wage NI and Kevin Murphy, Chief Executive, The Playhouse Derry.

The organisers are grateful to Frederick Street Quaker Meeting for the provision of a welcoming civic space.

Part of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics>>