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A Storytelling & Dialogue Project~
Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Welcome to Towards Understanding and Healing.
Towards Understanding and Healing is an organisation that recognizes individual experience in the context of the larger story of conflict in Northern Ireland. Towards Understanding and Healing 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. Because of Northern Ireland’s diverse history and culture, no one person can tell the story of the past thirty years. This project emphasizes the need to bring together all of the disparate narratives that comprise the story of Northern Ireland in order to better understand the effects of the past and the potential of the future.
New:
Towards Understanding and Healing has finished the training resource. The culmination of a year's work, we are excited to have a brand new resource designed to train trainers in the work of storytelling facilitiation.
Towards Understanding and Healing utilises three primary training resources in its training provision: a training manual, a book, and a DVD.
The DVD includes the following chapters:
- Introduction
- Storytelling Methodology
- Dialogue Methodology
- Impact of Storytelling and Dialogue
The training manual is divided into two major sections, Storytelling and Positive Encounter Dialogue, which include:
The Storytelling Section:
- Rationale for Storytelling
- Methodology of Storytelling
- Ethics of Storytelling
Positive Encounter Dialogue Section:
- Trauma and the Cost of the Troubles
- Victim/Survivor Issues
- Truth and Truth Recovery
- Remembrance and Commemoration
- Forgiveness and Reconciliation
The Stories in Conflict book includes the following chapters:
- Toward Understanding and Healing Through Storytelling and Listening: From the Jewish-German Context after the Holocaust to the Israeli-Palestinian Context
Dan Bar-On
- Glow-Worms
Damian Gorman
- The Role of Towards Understanding and Healing
Maureen Hetherington
- Holding Hope When Working Towards Understanding and Healing
Arlene Healey
- Dealing with the Past and the Politics of Victim-hood
Marie Breen Smyth
- Towards Truth and Shared Responsibility after the Troubles
Wilhelm Verwoerd and Alistair Little
- Embedding Justice: Truth-telling and Transitional Justice from Below
Patricia Lundy and Mark McGovern
- Ethical Remembering: Commemoration in a New Context
Johnston McMaster
- Forgiveness and Reconciliation: A Critical Reflection
Brandon Hamber
Project Aims:
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To facilitate the coming together of individuals from diverse groups to tell and hear stories in a safe environment.
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To facilitate a dialogue that allows people to speak fully and be listened to whilst creating opportunities for the exploration of each other's ideology, perceptions, attitudes, and sense of history.
- To
develop strategies that enable individuals to access further support
structures that allow them to move forward.
- To
maintain ongoing links and create new links as ways of sharing
ideas, models, and structures at local, national, and international
levels, and to continually learn from other people's post-conflict
experience.
- To build the capacity and sustainability of the organisation.
— Download the Mission Statement, Aims, Objectives, and Work Plan
— Download the Towards Understanding and Healing Brochure
— Download the "Storytelling Process" Brochure
— Download the "TUH Submission to the Consultative Group on the Past"
The
Junction is funded by the Community
Relations Council
through the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation.
The
Junction - 8 Bishop St. - Derry/Londonderry - BT48 6PW- Northern Ireland
Tel: +44 28 7136 1942 ~ Fax: +44 28 7126 4641
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