PLAYING WITH FIRE – Conflict transformation and the clown – Laughton Lodge, nr Lewes, UK

Name: PLAYING WITH FIRE – Conflict transformation and the clown – Laughton Lodge, nr Lewes, UK
Start: 2024-07-14T18:15:00+01:00
End: 2024-07-19T14:00:00+01:00
Location: Laughton Lodge

Schedule

Sun Jul 14 2024 at 06:15 pm to Fri Jul 19 2024 at 02:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Laughton Lodge | Lewes, EN

This in-person workshop will give participants the chance to explore real-life situations of conflict through clowning improvisations and through dialogue and reflection within our group. Based on Jean Paul Lederarch’s notion of conflict transformation it will explore the ways in which we engage with conflict at four different levels, the personal (our own inner conflicts and our reactions to conflict), the relational (interpersonal conflict and mediating other conflicts), the structural (conflicts embedded within societies and organisations) and the cultural (conflicts embedded within cultures).
By embracing our fears around vulnerability, loss of control and not knowing, the clown invites us to remain fully engaged, curious and interested even in times of greatest stress without losing the connectedness to our own inner voice and emotions. This practice counteracts our tendency in conflict to become smaller versions of ourselves and to get stuck in one-sidedness. Dealing successfully with conflict is about the courage and integrity to show our humanity and to listen to the humanity of the others.
Conflicts are an inherent aspect of human relationships, however, most of the time we experience them as painful and create defence mechanisms that prevent us from diving deeply into their root causes in order to restore the quality of our relationship with others. However, Lederarch presents conflict as the energy that precedes change. This course continues our research on the clown as social activist and provides an important grounding for looking at the social role of the Court Jester and the Fool in our society. By playing with fire we will look at how the conflicts we experience might be transformed into personal, interpersonal and social change.
The group is limited to 12