Towards Understanding and Healing
Contact: Jim O'Neill
Tel: 028 7136 1942
Email: jim.oneill@eircom.net
Website: www.thejunction-ni.org/towardsunderstandingandhealing.htm
Tel: 028 7136 1942
Email: jim.oneill@eircom.net
Website: www.thejunction-ni.org/towardsunderstandingandhealing.htm
Whilst truth is paramount , there is no individual or group of individuals who have the monopoly on truth as a result of the Troubles. Each community has an important contribution to make to the healing process of individual and community through the telling of personal ‘truths’ and to the listening of other ‘truths’.
Community healing must start with individual healing. Working through hurtful experiences and times must begin at the individual level as Muller-Fahrenholz (1998) states,
Memories are the roots of our identity, individually as well as collectively. Therefore it is of utmost importance for our identity that we should know how to deal with the complex webs of our memories. The integrity and wellbeing of our existence depends on whether we are at ease with our past or whether there are things which we need to put away in some dungeon of our heart, whence they are bound to inflict us with sudden and sickening intensity.
Unless people are given the opportunity to deal firstly with their own hurts, there can be no movement towards individual or community healing and the building of trust and good relations between the communities. And how society deals with, and takes care of victims/survivors and those at the interface of conflict (whether they are perceived perpetrator or victim) is an indicator as to how society can face up to its responsibilities towards its fellow human beings.
In recognising the full impact of conflict on individuals who are trying to cope (sometimes with unbearable feelings), society should be prepared to invest in collaborative and collective support strategies in the long term in order to prevent transgenerational cycles of violence and rekindling of old hurts. The work of Towards Understanding and Healing is one small part of this process.
An Crann/The Tree
The primary model of practice for Towards Understanding and Healing was based on the work of ‘An Crann/The Tree’, a Northern Ireland based organisation set up to help people tell and hear personal experiences of the conflict. The founder, Damian Gorman, a renowned poet and playwright, saw the necessity in creating spaces for storytelling at the individual and group level in order to help people articulate personal experiences and sometimes painful memories.
The ethos of An Crann/The Tree was one of inclusivity and validation of all individual experiences. By gathering and sharing disparate narratives through creative writing, video, drama, and all forms of art, the organisation aspired to connect people to the human and emotional detail of the hurt caused at all levels, given that people did not have access to others’ experiences at an interpersonal level. Greatly influenced by the language, creativity and learning from An Crann, a working committee was formed in 1998 to set up Towards Understanding and Healing. Face to face encounters were a natural progression to An Crann, using storytelling and dialogue to help create better understanding of and empathy with pain and suffering of others. By meeting face to face, the re-humanising of the ‘perceived enemy’ could begin.
Towards Understanding and Healing (TUH)
Towards Understanding and Healing is a project that recognizes individual experience in the context of the larger story of conflict in Northern Ireland. The Project offers a safe space for people to begin to articulate personal stories and also to listen to other stories, or “truths,” in a way that does not diminish their own experience. The very history and culture of Northern Ireland raises contentious issues and no one person can impartially communicate the story of the past thirty five years – indeed it is a disparate narrative with many perspectives dependent on the national, cultural, religious, social and political context. Through storytelling and positive encounter in dialogue, the project accentuates the need to bring together all of the disparate narratives that comprise the story of Northern Ireland in order to better understand the complexities of a conflict that informs how we relate to one another.
Towards Understanding and Healing has developed a methodology of storytelling and positive encounter dialogue that has proven to be an effective tool in helping many people caught up in the conflict (directly and indirectly) to address their own painful lived experience in a way that enables them to move towards reconciling old hurts and memories. The methodology has evolved over a number of years and has been informed by both local and international influences around storytelling and dialogue. However, the resulting project, ‘Towards Understanding and Healing’ is an authentic, locally developed model that has been tried and tested and which is culturally sensitive and appropriate for Northern Ireland.
The primary model of practice for Towards Understanding and Healing was based on the work of ‘An Crann/The Tree’, a Northern Ireland based organisation set up to help people tell and hear personal experiences of the conflict. The founder, Damian Gorman, a renowned poet and playwright, saw the necessity in creating spaces for storytelling at the individual and group level in order to help people articulate personal experiences and sometimes painful memories.
The ethos of An Crann/The Tree was one of inclusivity and validation of all individual experiences. By gathering and sharing disparate narratives through creative writing, video, drama, and all forms of art, the organisation aspired to connect people to the human and emotional detail of the hurt caused at all levels, given that people did not have access to others’ experiences at an interpersonal level. Greatly influenced by the language, creativity and learning from An Crann, a working committee was formed in 1998 to set up Towards Understanding and Healing. Face to face encounters were a natural progression to An Crann, using storytelling and dialogue to help create better understanding of and empathy with pain and suffering of others. By meeting face to face, the re-humanising of the ‘perceived enemy’ could begin.
Towards Understanding and Healing (TUH)
Towards Understanding and Healing is a project that recognizes individual experience in the context of the larger story of conflict in Northern Ireland. The Project offers a safe space for people to begin to articulate personal stories and also to listen to other stories, or “truths,” in a way that does not diminish their own experience. The very history and culture of Northern Ireland raises contentious issues and no one person can impartially communicate the story of the past thirty five years – indeed it is a disparate narrative with many perspectives dependent on the national, cultural, religious, social and political context. Through storytelling and positive encounter in dialogue, the project accentuates the need to bring together all of the disparate narratives that comprise the story of Northern Ireland in order to better understand the complexities of a conflict that informs how we relate to one another.
Towards Understanding and Healing has developed a methodology of storytelling and positive encounter dialogue that has proven to be an effective tool in helping many people caught up in the conflict (directly and indirectly) to address their own painful lived experience in a way that enables them to move towards reconciling old hurts and memories. The methodology has evolved over a number of years and has been informed by both local and international influences around storytelling and dialogue. However, the resulting project, ‘Towards Understanding and Healing’ is an authentic, locally developed model that has been tried and tested and which is culturally sensitive and appropriate for Northern Ireland.
The significance of the TUH model is the creation of a process whereby people can perhaps deal with hurts in a way that allows them to honour their story and bring closure, rather than passing hurts on to future generations. While this model may not be appropriate or desirable for everyone, it offers, by its very nature, a platform for many who are not ready to articulate their story, as they feel that their own experience has been reflected and voiced by others to those who have caused deep hurts and devastated lives.
For approximately nine years, TUH has held storytelling residentials and workshops, conferences and positive encounter dialogues across Northern Ireland, the border counties, and in Britain. Over the last two years, TUH has developed a comprehensive training resource on Dealing with the Past through Storytelling and Positive Encounter Dialogue. The resource consists of a DVD outlining Storytelling and Positive Encounter Dialogue, a comprehensive training manual, which includes eight workshops, and a book entitled, Stories in Conflict.
Under Peace III Priority 1: Reconciling Communities, TUH is currently rolling out a Trainers Programme to enable groups and communities to facilitate storytelling at the local level.