Community peacebuilding and restorative practice

Capabilities for Life is one of the RSA’s Design for Life key intervention areas. Its focus is on how we can use our education system to enable young people to thrive.

With this principle as his theme, at the end of July Roy Leighton FRSA, philosopher, peace scholar and theatre practitioner, facilitated a series of community peace talks with local schools and communities across the West Midlands. These talks formed part of a wider project investigating how we can use peace practice to improve school engagement and reduce exclusions, so making young people feel better able to thrive both at school and in the community.

Roy’s talk explored innovative ways to improve education and learning, thereby building the capability in our young people which the RSA has always seen as so essential to both individual and collective progress.

Alongside our learning-based interventions, we are also blessed to have amazing Fellows who embody this mission over the country and beyond. Our amazing network of Fellows supports our learning-based interventions and wider mission both locally and far beyond. As part of our Central region activities, we held a series of peace talks with Roy Leighton FRSA at several partner schools in July. These events contributed to a wider piece of work which explores how we can win the commitment of pupils and staff to embed restorative, peace-based practices in schools.

This is critical as young people are often denied the tools they need to respond to conflict during their education., Navigating these situations on their own can then lead to damaging outcomes. Implementing a peace matrix with students and staff addresses this. It encourages the creation of a supportive community of peace-builders who will act as mediators and recommend ways to make the school environment a more peaceful place. The hope is that pupils involved will then pass their knowledge and skills on to their peers, family and community, so promoting peace in their local areas.

The peace talk events were a thorough success, engaging RSA Fellows and community members in discussions facilitated by each school’s student peace ambassadors. This allowed them to put their skills into action and encourage local people to consider peace practices in their daily lives.

The peace ambassadors from Willenhall E-Act Academy said:

As this work continues, we hope that we will be able to offer more opportunities for further Peace Talks and the involvement of local Fellows. If you would like to find out more about peacebuilding in schools, businesses and communities please visit the Undiscovered Country webpage: www.undiscoveredcountry.org.uk or email: admin@undiscoveredcountry.org.uk