Do you want a Conflict team at your small festival?
Here is how to resource your team
What are key ingredients for creating a conflict team at a Festival. These suggestions might be effective for festivals of up to 150, including kids, for family festivals.
Get a Clear Collective Intention: Festival organisers need to be committed to having an agreement for responding to conflict and need to resource the agreement with planning time and support for those investing time in the initiative.
This doesn’t work so well if: Festival organisers aren’t all on board with the initiative.
Create a Conflict team: You need 5-10 people (skilled in Nonviolent Communication or other conflict resolution strategies) form a group to respond to conflict and tension on camp.
This doesn’t work so well if: The group is too small, or if individuals attention is split between this and other tasks, or if individuals don’t have much experience in being in the presence of conflict.
Prepare the team: Have at least two meetings before the Festival so conflict team get to know each other and prepare themselves for the task. (See meeting plans below)
Communication to participants: You need a simple and obvious way of accessing the conflict team. (eg In the first two community meetings, the conflict team stand up and identify themselves. And/Or do a skit/sketch to model asking for support.)
Continue team connectivity during festival: Have one meeting per day to track participants and see who needed intervention and support. (see below for examples of how to organise the pre-festival meetings).
This doesn’t work so well if: People don’t show up for meetings. Make them and end in itself, an opportunity for grounded connection and nurturing community.
Everyone is Crew! Encourage all participants at the festival to be active bystanders. Late intervention in situations creates ongoing conflicts, so encourage team and other participants to be self responsible and step forward towards others who are struggling. Keep on this messaging in community meetings throughout the festival.
This doesn’t work so well if: Participants have unrealistic expectations of conflict team and don’t take responsibility themselves.
Upskill everyone: Offer skills session during the festival of NVC/ Walking towards Tension / bystander intervention, to empower participants with skills necessary to deal with conflicts.
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You can download these Meeting Plans here.
Structure for first meeting with conflict team
Timings for a 1 hr meeting. You can have a longer meeting if people have more time
10 mins Introduction
We will record this meeting for those who can't make it. We are happy to have you on the Conflict Support team to support us to have a restorative approach to conflict on camp. Restorative means we seek to restore connection where it is lost.
15 mins Go Around: What are your hopes and fears about camp?
5 mins Info sharing: How do people know about our approach to responding to conflict?
In the recent Joining letter we let people know that there is a Conflict transformation team.
In the Further information Letter which goes out in the next week, we will give more information about our approach to conflict transformation.
On the first evening and following morning of the camp we will inform people who they can go to if they need support around anything they are out of balance with, in tension or in conflict around.
We will all be identified as being available to reach out to if necessary.
5 mins Info sharing: How will the conflict support team communicate and operate?
It has proved very effective last year to meet every day and track who needed support, who was struggling and who it might be useful to reach out to before a situation escalated.
This year we propose to meet every day in the evening at 6.45 - 7.15pm to track who is struggling and who needs support, and any conflicts brewing. Can we discuss and confirm this time in this meeting?
15 mins: Skill building: What if there is a conflict or some tension?
Go Around: What experiences and strategies help to de-escalate tense situations?
Share some ideas here and return to this in the second prep session
10 mins Finalising and Checkout round
Structure for second meeting with conflict team
5 mins Introduction/check in
10 mins Recap.
How will people know about our approach to conflict at camp?
What will happen on the first evening and following morning of camp?
What is the time of the daily meeting of the conflict supporting team?
What will happen in this meeting?
What role play practice did we have in our last meeting?
10 mins Kinds of conflicts
What are the kinds of issues we need to be tracking/noticing in order to bring them to our meeting? Let’s gather some.
Over stretched parents
Dynamics between children that have some tension around
One child has hit another child.
Dangerous play
Adults expressing dissatisfaction with the camp structure
Problems with handwashing facilities and people getting upset about it
Complaint about a workshop
Conflicts around environmental concerns: Ecological vs non ecological soap usage
10 mins What are the ways of responding? Elicit these and/or offer them
Have a conversation with the people involved separately
Have a conversation with the people involved together
Position some people at a place where tension is arising or at a time when tension arises
Mention something in the community meeting (please do this, please don’t do this etc)
Have a session dedicated to exploring the issue
Do things differently eg change the time of a session
15 mins Together let’s explore a couple of incidents and decide how to respond to it.
10 mins What are taking away? Any further doubts/ questions?
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One example of a conflict and the resources it took to come to some resolution.
Ripping of hammock lining lent to the camp by a participant from rough usage by children. The person who the hammock belonged to, spoke about their upset in the community meeting.
A conversation with some parents and some children was supported by a member of the conflict transformation team.
Agreements were made of 1) Extra care on hammocks 2) remedying the ripped hammock by parents clubbing together for money to replace it and/or kids helping out in kitchen (as kids don’t have money).
Next day. Person whose hammock it was, came to Transforming conflict rep the following day saying “Only one child has helped out in kitchen. I want them to honour their words”
Another conversation was had with the children. Reminding of agreements that were made the previous day and asking how everyone was with these agreements. This was done with the energy of openness and curiosity rather than reprimand. We got a clearer task for children to do in kitchen (wiping tables) and this was done once by two children.
Still, it was clear that most children weren’t on board with the idea of helping out in the kitchen, and there was a power dynamic inherent in this suggestion and children didn’t feel a sense of agency in this suggestion.
Then the next day. two creative initiatives came out of slightly unresolved sense around the hammocks.
The ripped netting was removed and made into an item of clothing for the person (who ended up at the end of the camp saying that the process around the hammocks was the best introduction to NVC she could have had.)
Some of the netting was used to make a mini sculpture of a hammock and the financial contributions were put in the hammock. Around £30 was raised.
In total, this was a 3 day process.
Learning
It’s a 2-4 day process to move through each issue
dealing early with issues supports flow and integration and prevents escalation
Have awareness of systemic issues and make plans to mitigate the negative effects of them eg individualised culture, people don’t walk towards other people in conflict, people, for many reasons, don’t walk towards children in conflict. We did a session on bystander intervention, to mitigate this individualising cultural pattern
engaging parents of children who finding it harder to find a playmate
Asking ‘How are you doing with the agreements we made yesterday?’ rather than ‘You haven’t kept to your agreement?’
recognise power dynamics when making agreements (kids are socialised to accept and go along with parents/adults ideas)
notice the difference between strategies to remedy a situation that are clearly connected (the helping in the kitchen wasn’t so clearly connected for children, the making things from the hammock lining was more connected)
What are the criteria for deciding how to prioritise what conflicts get our support
a TC team member or a camp participant believes that physical hurt/damage is likely to happen
a TC team member or a camp participant sees that physical hurt/damage has already happened
other skills are needed eg bystander intervention
Contact ceribuckmaster@gmail.for more information/support
Mediation – Ceri Buckmaster