Making Dialogue Effective, Panel Discussion 5 - Becoming a Dialogue Movement: What Can Dialogue Learn from Other Movements?

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:45 in Discussion Forums

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Where: Dialogue Society, London
Time: 6:45pm
Panellists:

Dr Nicola Montagna, Middlesex University
Danny Chivers, Environmental Author, Activist and Performance Poet
Ozcan Keles, Executive Director, Dialogue Society

Abstract

Panellists will bring their knowledge and experience of dialogue-related movements and other social movements to a discussion of what movements are, what they can achieve and how they become powerful. Discussion will include the advantages and potential drawbacks of identifying with a broader movement.

Questions to be considered:

What does it mean to be a "movement"?
Is it desirable to be part of a movement?
What can social movements achieve at their best?
How can movements become powerful?
What are the possible disadvantages of identifying with a broader movement?
How can movements be organised and effective without being rigid or hierarchical?

Confirmed panellists:

Dr Nicola Montagna, Middlesex University
Nicola Montagna took his doctorate in 2005 on Italian Social Movements at the Middlesex University, where he is currently Lecturer in Criminology. His main research interests are in social movements and protest, international and skilled migration in Britain, Italy and Europe, ethnicities and political sociology.
Danny Chivers, Performance Poet Involved in the Environmental Movement
Danny Chivers has been involved in the UK environmental movement in various capacities for almost 15 years, through work, study, activism and performance. He is currently involved in the UK Tar Sands Network, which links UK environmental campaigners directly with Indigenous activists fighting destructive Tar Sands extraction projects on the ground in Canada. In his new book "The No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change", he argues that dialogue and solidarity between social movements is a vital missing element in the struggle to prevent disastrous climate change.
Ozcan Keles, Executive Director, Dialogue Society
Ozcan, a non-practising Barrister and member of the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, is a full-time Doctoral Candidate in Human Rights Law at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex, where he holds the Scholarship Award of 2006. He was called to the Bar in 2005 after successfully completing the Bar course at the Inns of Court School of Law. He obtained his LLM in Human Rights Law from SOAS, University of London, in 2002. Ozcan’s research interests include: international human rights law, freedom of belief and religion, the European Court of Human Rights, Muslims in Europe and faith-based movements.
Ozcan has been an active volunteer for a number of different charities since 1997. He has founded and coordinated new charities and projects whilst also volunteering for ongoing initiatives and programmes.

Introduction to Panel Discussion Series

A series of panel discussions examining the question of how to make intercultural dialogue work. Those working with intercultural and interreligious dialogue at the community or professional level face a range of challenges regarding its effectiveness. We are asked, or ask ourselves, such questions as:

Does what we do make or contribute to a tangible difference to society in any way?
Does our work, whether directly or otherwise, reach beyond the sympathetic to those whose attitudes and behaviour are an actual threat to peace and social cohesion?
Are the relationships that our work initiates across cultural or religious boundaries of a meaningful and lasting kind?
Is our work part of something broader that is capable of effecting change on a grand scale?

This series is intended to occasion focused and constructive discussion of such questions among a range of people concerned with relationships between different cultural, religious or social groups, in their professional lives or at the community level.

Findings and conclusions will be published. It is hoped that the series will be replicated at three independent UK branches of the Dialogue Society, allowing us to draw on a wider range of perspectives in collating findings.

Aims and Objectives

To encourage interprofessional dialogue, interaction and cooperation between people working on intercultural/ interreligious dialogue, peace and social cohesion.
To foster dialogue between people engaged with dialogue at the personal or community level, and those concerned with the same questions in a professional capacity.
To explore and clarify the questions of what effectiveness in dialogue is, and whether and how it can be measured.
To find a range of creative and practical answers to the question of how dialogue can be made effective by

identifying and promoting current best practice and
identifying and promoting promising future possibilities.
To share these answers among all participants of the series and more widely.

The Topics:

1. "Effectiveness" in Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue: Can it be defined? How do we measure it?
30/11/2010
Confirmed speakers:

Mehri Niknam, MA, MBE, Executive Director, the Joseph Interfaith Foundation.
Simon Keyes, Director of St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace.
Dr Andrew Smith, Scripture Union.

2. Effectiveness at the grassroots: seeking the personal and the genuine
07/12/2010
Confirmed speakers:

Imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid, Chairman, Muslim Council for Religious Harmony UK; Executive Member, World Congress of Faiths.
Samuel Klein, Co-Director, the Coexistence Trust
Sarah Perceval, Storyteller

3. Effectiveness in dialogue for conflict transformation
14/12/2010
Confirmed speakers:

Dr Diana Francis, Conflict Transformation Facilitator, Trainer and Consultant.
Dr Marwan Darweish, Senior Lecturer at Coventry, Expert in Peace Processes and Conflict Transformation.

4. Skills in dialogue: cultivating effective listening and empathy.
09/02/2011
Confirmed speakers:

Lisa Cumming, Programme for a Peaceful City, Bradford University Peace Studies Department
Justine Huxley, Interfaith Projects Coordinator, St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace
Jill Adam, Executive Director, Level Partnerships; previously Head of the School of Education and Professional Development at Leeds Metropolitan University.

5. Becoming a dialogue movement: what can dialogue learn from other movements?
02/03/2011
Confirmed speakers:

Danny Chivers, Performance Poet Involved in the Environmental Movement
Dr Nicola Montagna, Middlesex University

6. Preaching to the unconverted: how can dialogue reach the disengaged, the prejudiced and the hostile?
Confirmed speakers:

Stephen Shashoua, Director, Three Faiths Forum
Alison Seabrooke, Community Development Foundation
Prof Ian Linden, Director of Faiths Act, Tony Blair Faith Foundation / Professor of Religious Studies, SOAS
Canon David Porter, Canon Director for Reconciliation Ministry at Coventry Cathedral

Guests are warmly invited to attend as many of the sessions as possible to contribute to an ongoing process of focused reflection over the course of the series.