We offer dialogue and conflict transformation based on Restorative Circles (RC), developed in Brazil by Dominic Barter. RC is an application of the principles of NVC to restorative process. It is used in communities, organisations, businesses, schools, prisons and court systems. Rather than establishing blame and seeking punishment, RC seeks to understand the roots of conflict and thereby increase community safety and wellbeing.

Why Restorative Circles?

Conflict, misunderstanding, and breaks in relationships can impact many people directly and or indirectly. If we do not attend to them, it is unlikely that we will get the learning or the healing that is potential in them.

If we leave conflicts unattended to – if we do nothing and walk away from them – they may fester, slowly grow more painful in many small and large ways, and create many more future problems for the broader community. Is it possible to heal conflicts before they create a larger break in the community? The best way that we know of to help create connection and understanding is through dialogue; we do not know of a more effective way of working with conflict. 

In our experience, both within our own community as well as dozens of other communities we’ve worked with over the years, when we sit together in dialogue we are much better able to gather in all the information that we need to see the conflict more wholistically, to learn what is working and what is not working within our community, and then to discover solutions that work for everyone. Without dialogue we do not see how this will happen. We would love for all communities anywhere in the world to be as resilient and as powerful as possible. What would each of you like for your community?

Creating a Restorative System

Another hope we have is that as a result of dialogue there may be created a restorative system for the wider community; in other words, your community would set up a set of agreements so that when future conflicts arise within the community you will already have in place a process of how to work with that conflict that you have all agreed to before hand. That is presuming that this is something that you all want and would value.