Celebrating the 20th birthday of FEPTO's Peace Building and Conflict Transformation Task Force

This was a very important Conference regarding the hard times the world is living. We heard people that shared their experiences in many different war contexts (Jorge Burmeister-Petulá) and Palestine (Agnes Dudler); their projects of working "With families with traumatic experiences: evidence based trauma stabilisation programme (EBTS)" (Reijo Kaupillo); and the sharing of the Mona's Rakhawy "From sibling rivalry to wars: the role of group work and group psychotherapy". There were more than 120 participants. Thank you so much, Maurizio Gasseau and his team of the University of Aosta's Valey.

 

My own workshop was about: "Building Peace & conflict transformation: Galtung’s perspective". 

Abstract: 

Abstract:

Since 2008, when the crises of the financial systems emerged, tensions, conflicts and wars started to increase at all social levels until today. This situation is nurtured by political polarisations based on fake-news and hate discourses propagated through social media, promoting the increase of nationalisms and the extreme right-wing populist parties, the threatening of immigrants and minorities, all this associated with an unfair distribution of resources and in simultaneous with the climate changes.

In this workshop the proposal is to learn and to explore in a sociodramatic way, the methodology developed by John Galtung (1930-2024), the founder of “Peace Studies”. He developed a broaden social theory about violence and peace, authoring concepts as direct violence, negative peace (absence of direct violence), and positive peace, related with structural and cultural violence. Promoting positive peace considers the future, and the values associated, is built in the present, in the “here and now”, considering Human Rights, a better and more equitable distribution of resources, regarding the survival, the well-being, Freedom and a sustainable and promising relationship of each person with their environment, in which everyone can develop their best potential in a sustainable way for the common good of society. All these besides Social Justice, participation and Democracy. This approach challenges us to acknowledge conflicts, to transform them in a creative and non-violent way.

The morenian Sociodrama approach, from our point of view, can give a great contribution to conflict transformation through its technics like “future projection”, “social atom”, “role-plays”, “role-reversal”, “time-lines” and others, exploring the five phases proposed by Galtung (2008): (i) the identification and analysis of conflicts; (ii) the common aims to be achieved in the future; (iii) the critical reflection about both former phases; (iv) the plan for action, with several steps; and (v) the implementation of the plan.

We need to learn to live together by building common positive peaceful future scenarios. We need to understand better each other, to dream and to dialogue, to express ourselves, to act together and start by giving steps and more steps towards Peace – it’s an everyday work and a goal. Let’s give some steps together on this workshop towards Peace!

 

References:

Belchior, M. (2013). Aprender na Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento - entre o local e o global - contributos para a Educação para a Paz. Tese de Doutoramento, Instituto de Educação - Universidade de Lisboa. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/8005

Ercoşkun, B. (2021). On Galtung’s Approach to Peace Studies. Lectio Socialis, 5(I), 01–07. https://doi.org/10.47478/lectio.792847

Galtung, J. (2008). Form and Content of Peace Education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Peace Education. Information Age Publishing, pp. 49-58

 

Invitation to follow the plenaries: "CREATING SPACES FOR PEACE AND CARE IN GROUPS IN TIMES OF WAR AND VIOLENCE"

To follow the plenaries in the mornings of the 28th and the 29th, at distance - all interested are invited : https://invallee.zoom.us/j/87971360939...

Saturday, 28th - 9:30 (CET)

Sunday, 29th - 9:00 (CET)

 

To know more: HERE 

 

 

 

"CREATING SPACES FOR PEACE AND CARE IN GROUPS IN TIMES OF WAR AND VIOLENCE", 28 & 29 June, University of Aosta (Italy)

 

Program: HERE

Final Meeting of FEPTO's Annual Meeting: in the deep earth, at 120 m deep, in the Salt mines of Tudra (15/05/2025)

 

FEPTO Theater

"Who is the leader?" was the topic of my group. We couldn't find a pilot to conduct the airplane in the journey we are living...

 

FEPTO's Annual Meeting: the group of participants

 ... in front of  Mattias Rex Monument, besides Saint Michael Cathedral:

FEPTO Conference: the whole group of participants, Cluj (Romenia), May 2025

 

Our workshop "From a Sociodrama perspective: How can schools contribute to build a more inclusive and peaceful communities?"

 Abstract:

Schools are much more then places of knowledge transmission. They are social lab settings that from one side mirror what is happening in society (wars, multiculturality and conflictuality, climatic changes, digital and screen dependence), but from another perspective they can provide valuable social learning and living experiences that may contribute to build more inclusive, peaceful, democratic, spontaneous and creative communities.

Moreno challenged us to transform our conflicts and tensions, in a creative and nonviolent way, by reversing roles with each other, by role plays, by stepping in the shoes of the others, by enacting our dreams. In educational settings, from kindergarten to university level, these techniques can be used to address many curricular issues but also conflicts and other topics. They allow us to live in the present and valuing it, but also to project us in the future, becoming aware that we are building it in the «here and now».

In this workshop we will use expressive and creative action methods, based in sociodrama. We will start from sharing our experience and what we value in learning settings like democratic participation, finding together solutions for emergent problems and role playing curricular contents. We also will build simple masks and play fairytales characters. So we will : (i) explore, by using sociometry, some group features ; (ii) we will play conflicting situations by «role reversal» and discovering the broader social athom ; (iii)  we will enact fairytals characters and build their masks ; (iv) we will share our dreams and reflect on the role of teachers and schools to contribute to deal with diversity and todays problems.

Learning objectives:

-            - To use sociometry in learning settings ;

-            - To explore conflicting situations by social athom and rôle reversal;

-            - To acknowledge the potential of using creative action methods in learning settings.

 

 

SSome photos of the workshop

 

  

Messages from what they learned
When asked for a message for the group, for the conference, for the city, the country for Europe and for the world, the group said:
- Play more!
- We need to be creative!
- Trust more!!
- How powerful and creative we can be all together!
- Take more time to clarify conflicts and issues!!
- Take time to acknowledge everybody.

Some links more:

Mario Buchbinder and Elina Matoso – Instituto de la Mascara (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

- Workshop organised by IAGP (translated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaur4EliBQk

-Instituto de la Mascara: https://mascarainstituto.com.ar/

About our work: 

Belchior, M. (2023). ‘Sociodrama with Art’ in a multicultural context: The pacific Portuguese Carnation Revolution. In J. Damjanov & M. Westberg (Ed.), Discovering the Languages of Peace - Handbook of Sociopsychodrama, pp. 87-100. https://discoveringlanguagesofpeace.weebly.com/publications.html

 

Belchior, M. (2021a). "'Role-play' of human body - as if we were ...". In K. Galgoczi, D. Adderley, M. Belchior, Á. Blasko, J. Damjanov, , M. Maciel, J. Teszary, M. Werner, M. Westberg (2021). Sociodrama: The Art and Science of Social Change. PERFORMERS Project (ERASMUS +). L’Harmattan, 41-42, https://sociodramanetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sociodrama_the_art_and_science_of_social_change_nyomdai.pdf

 

Belchior, M. (2021c). Becoming a Sociodramatist: Sociodrama in Education. In D. Adderley, M. Belchior, Á. Blasko, J. Damjanov, K. Galgoczi, M. Maciel, J. Teszary, M. Werner, M. Westberg (2021). Sociodrama: The Art and Science of Social Change. PERFORMERS Project (ERASMUS +). L’Harmattan, 266-286, https://sociodramanetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sociodrama_the_art_and_science_of_social_change_nyomdai.pdf