On Wednesday we traveled to Ballycastle to visit Corrymeela, an organization which works in the peace process and is a place for people to begin the reconciliation process. This was the first time during the trip that we actually got to participate in dialogue activities rather than just sit and listen to people talk about dialogue and their work with dialogue.
 |
| The view from Corrymeela |
 |
| Part of the facility |
 |
| Corrymeela |
We mostly played games that you would play as an icebreaker or at camp, but they all had a specific purpose in the dialogue process. For example we played four corners also know as spectrum. In this game our facilitator, Paul would make a statement and we would move to a section of the room according to our answer to the statement. One of the statements was stand on the left side of the room if you have a tattoo and stand on the right side of the room if you do not have a tattoo. Although it seemed like a pretty simple statement, after we moved he began by pointing to the people with tattoos and saying what if I took a picture of this and wrote underneath “people with tattoos”, what kind of assumptions would you make about those people? It was a great way to think about the kind of labels we attach to people and the assumptions we make about them, even if we don’t know very much about the person. It was also a good illustration of the kind of assumptions or stereotypes that we carry with us into the dialogue process and how we need to be aware of them when interacting with people.
It was definitely a learning experience!
 |
| A picture from the ride back to Derry |
No comments:
Post a Comment