A Journey of Art and Conflict

David Oddie

Description

A Journey of Art and Conflict is a deeply personal exploration of David Oddie’s attempts to uncover the potential of the arts as a resource for reconciliation in the wake of conflict and for the creative transformation of conflict itself. It began when Oddie, seeing the fractured world around him, asked himself what he could do to help; that question set him off on travels around the world, including to Palestine, Kosovo, South Africa, India, Northern Ireland, Brazil, and other places. In each location, he met with local people who had suffered from conflict and worked with them to forge artistic networks that have the potential to transform their situation.

Part I: Weaving the Net

Chapter 1. Genesis, Ideas and Inspiration

Chapter 2. The Weaver's Story

Chapter 3. The Weaver's Skills and Experience

Part II: Casting the Net

Chapter 4. The United Kingdom: Lisa in Burnley and Bolton; Plymouth and Durham

Chapter 5. Marina in Palestine

Chapter 6. Jeton in Kosovo

Chapter 7. Mary in South Africa

Part III: Widening the Net

Chapter 8. Interlude 

Chapter 9: Urvashi in India

Chapter 10. Marcia in Brazil

Chapter 11. Matt and Mary in Derry/Londonderry

Chapter 12. Sierra Leone

Chapter 13. Slipping through the Net and New Partners

Part IV: Damage, Repairs and Re-invention

Chapter 14. Crisis

Chapter 15. Hauling in the Net: A Conversation

Part V: Samples from the Catch

Chapter 16. Suggestions for Exercises and Workshop Programmes

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• EDUCATION
• Theatre
• Performance art
• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783205028
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2015 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2015 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editing: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Cover image: Tony Gee
Production manager: Bethan Ball and Claire Organ
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
ISBN: 978-1-78320-500-4
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-501-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78320-502-8
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue
Introduction
Part I: Weaving the Net
Chapter 1: Genesis, Ideas and Inspiration
Chapter 2: The Weaver’s Story
Chapter 3: The Weaver’s Skills and Experience
Part II: Casting the Net
Chapter 4: The United Kingdom: Lisa in Burnley and Bolton; Plymouth and Durham
Chapter 5: Marina in Palestine
Chapter 6: Jeton in Kosovo
Chapter 7: Mary in South Africa
Part III: Widening the Net
Chapter 8: Interlude
Chapter 9: Urvashi in India
Chapter 10: Marcia in Brazil
Chapter 11: Matt and Mary in Derry/Londonderry
Chapter 12: Sierra Leone
Chapter 13: Slipping through the Net and New Partners
Part IV: Damage, Repairs and Re-invention
Chapter 14: Crisis
Chapter 15: Hauling in the Net: A Conversation
Part V: Samples from the Catch
Chapter 16: Suggestions for Exercises and Workshop Programmes
Appendix 1: ARROW/Indra Congress Timeline: Some Key Events
Appendix 2: Extracts from the Indra 5 Year Plan 2014–2019
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Archbishop Desmond Tutu and John Paul Lederach for providing the inspiration and vision leading to the emergence of the original ARROW programme, which later became The Indra Congress.
Prof Tim Prentki has been a patient and wise counsellor and friend during the writing of the book. Thank you.
Dawn Melville and Lesley Alcock were the original ARROW administrative team and together we went on a steep learning curve, with a lot of laughter on the way. Again, my thanks.
The development of what is now The Indra Congress would not have been possible without the dedication, good humour and creativity of the group coordinators around the world. My thanks are due especially to: Lisa O’Neill-Rogan and Claire Pearce in Bolton; Karen Barnes in Burnley; Dienka Hines, Alix Harris and Sheila Snellgrove in Plymouth; Laura Emerson and Julie Ward in Durham; Dr Matt Jennings, Mary Duddy and Sinead Devine in Derry/Londonderry; Marina Barham and Al Harah Theatre in Beit Jala, Palestine; Jeton Neziraj in Kosovo; Mary Lange in Durban, South Africa; Dr Urvashi Sahni in Lucknow, India; Marcia Pompeo in Brazil; Isatta Kallon in Sierra Leone; Dr Diane Conrad in Canada; Betty Giannouli in Greece; and Maria Pappacosta in Cyprus.
For providing a supportive home for ARROW at University College Plymouth St Mark and St John I would like to thank Dr John Rea and especially Dr David Baker and Dr Bernadette Casey, whose unwavering backing for ARROW helped to make dreams become reality. Warm thanks to Dr James Hennessy for his endless patience, wonderful humour and friendship during both good and challenging times. Many thanks to Jo Trelfa for introducing me to the wider field of conflict studies. I would also like to thank Richard Marsh and Julie Matthews of Barefoot for their ongoing support and Heather Knight, who helped set up the Plymouth ARROW group and produced much informative research material on the way.
When the reality looked like slipping away, Prof David Coslett and colleagues Klitos Andrea and Ruth Way at the University of Plymouth reached out the hand of friendship and hope.
Many thanks to Prof John O’Toole who gave permission for and encouraged me to ‘run with’ the innovative Cooling Conflict programme.
I would like to express my appreciation for the consistent support of Plymouth and Cornwall MPs Colin Breed, Gary Streeter, Linda Gilroy and Alison Seabeck.
I am grateful for the patient and supportive advice offered by Bethan Ball and Steve Harries and Claire Organ at Intellect.
I would like to thank my wife, Hilary, who, during the period of my cancer treatment and the writing of this book, has been such a loving pillar of support. I am blessed.
The book is dedicated to all the young people who have participated in ARROW/Indra activities over the last ten years, and to those who will participate in those activities over the next ten years.
Foreword
Lower-caste girls from Lucknow, who have never left their native city, perform stories of patriarchal abuse to Cypriots. Brazilian students use Playback theatre to repair the broken dreams of young people from Bolton. Palestinian youths depict life under occupation to an audience from parts of the globe where internal exile is a fact of daily life. This marketplace of cultural performances, live and filmed, is located at the epicentre of conflict transformation where nothing is what it appears and brutal histories glint like shards of broken glass atop the barriers of division. What has brought such a diversity of young people, learning to express their lives in art, under the same roof in Derry? Who has inspired the leaps of faith and commitment of energy and will to make such an unlikely encounter a rich and vibrant reality? It is David Oddie and his vision of young artists as peace-builders that created this thrilling moment in the summer of 2013. The Derry Indra Congress was a testimony to what ‘ordinary’ people can achieve, against the global grain of neo-liberalism, by being determined to realise their hopes for a different world in action. David’s dream provided the spark that ignited the passions of like-minded, remarkable people who came together in one space to share experiences, to rehearse conflicts and to depart a week later enriched in the knowledge and understanding that, however desperate the circumstances of their lives, they are not alone; rather they are participants in a wider web of solidarity and shared feelings about what it is to be human and how the world must be changed so that their human potential can be realised.
This book tells the story of how David’s life, both personal and professional, furnished him with the motive and the means to embark on a programme of practical actions that embody his desire to make a difference to a world too often dominated by the conflicts and misunderstandings that derive from rampant individualism and myopic nationalism. His unshakeable belief in the capacities of young people when brought together through artistic interaction is the beacon that guides the reader’s journey. It is a book like no other, for it dissolves the conventional distinction between the personal and the professional in an effort to share with the reader the sense in which David’s life has become his work and his work has become his life. This is no crafted reminiscence or political memoir, still less another academic tome on applied theatre. It is one man’s tale of how and why he set about using the means at his disposal to answer the question: ‘What am I doing here?’ Part adventure story, part traveller’s log, part confession, the book defies categorisation. It is a record of David’s achievements, failures, partial successes: the messy business called living; a record of things done and things not done that most of us keep to ourselves but which David is frank enough to expose to a reader’s curiosity in order that we may better understand what we are all about in the struggle to make a better world.
The neo-liberal model of globalisation has led to fierce competition for the planet’s resources and to evermore solitary and fragmented lives for individuals as the spaces for live, collective action are incrementally closed down in favour of virtual opportunities and the ‘rights’ of the individual as consumer but not as citizen. This book charts an antithetical model designed to bring young people into live and virtual communion so that they can share experiences and use their developing understanding to create artful interventions into their worlds. This globalisation explores the possibilities of a one world ethos to contribute to intercultural relationships in the cause of conflict transformation, conceived not in terms of academic theorisation but rather as a series of concrete actions undertaken by young people, inspired by the person and actions of David who has embodied this notion of globalisation in his relationships with the Indra partners with whom he collaborates.
Closely related to this vision is the notion of what constitutes an educational process. Much of what passes for formal education around the world today is, in fact, training for jobs that may or may not exist, servicing the neo-liberal version of capitalism and thereby helping to increase social inequality, leading to conflict and violence. David’s educational process builds from the lived experience of the young people who are able to participate in the Indra web. Spaces are created where those experiences interact with the experiences of others, all of which are, in turn, exposed to the imaginative, ‘what if?’, utopian proposals of the theatre from which young people can be encouraged to remake the world according to their own needs and desires, rather than those of our self-interested, economic masters. This process is not training for surviving in the existing world but education for playing an active role in a more people-centred world.
David’s journey in this book is motivated at each step by an idealism directed at changing the world. His vision is utopian and without Utopia,