We're delighted to see the folks at the UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts celebrating the contribution Restorative Circles can make to safer, and more intelligently funded, community services.

The Radical Efficiency report, published this week by NESTA, the UK's leading social innovation think tank, features social technologies that, in their words, deliver "much better public outcomes for much lower cost".

Restorative Circles are one of 10 such innovations studied in the report, of over 100 surveyed. These 10 were chosen because they are "demonstrably different, better and lower cost than traditional approaches". NESTA found us because of the results RCs produce.

They write, "(these) examples of radical efficiency... harness the potential of new technologies and the power of community participation and creation. These different, better and lower cost public services – whether they enable restorative justice in Brazil or facilitate Mental Health First Aid in Australia – all work with the grain of these new sources of value, not against them. These innovators recognise that the challenge lies in how we shape this new world, not whether or not it will emerge. It is already happening."

Check out their report, published this week at www.nesta.org.uk

Or read / download it here.

Click here to download:

NESTA_Radical_Efficiency_report.pdf (1910 KB)

For quick access to some of the key points, read pages 1 - 4, 8, 19 and 41 - 43.

If you'd like to see all the RC references, just search for 'restorative' within the document.

And to read about the report being presented to the UK government, visit: http://bit.ly/aHOKrl 

This interview with Dominic Barter was filmed and edited by Martina Cavicchioli during the RC Introduction at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City in 2009. It was made to present the work to German audiences ahead of the first presentations in Bremen and Berlin in August. It gives an overview of the 'why', 'what' and 'how' of Restorative Circles.

We hope it will be useful to those hearing about the work for the first time.

It is common for our responses to conflict to be organised around the desire to bring security and healing to those involved, and thus to focus on resolving conflict. This seems obvious only because it is a given for most people that conflict is problematic.

The damage - to lives, to relationships, to the well being of the community - that the violent expression of conflict can inflict may support this view of conflict as something dangerous, that must be controlled.

But the violent expression is not the conflict itself. And it is an ineffective means of expression in part exactly because it seeks to control, to impose, to force.

Restorative Circles take therefore a significantly different, though no less dynamic and engaged, approach. In response to a violent or criminal act, a broken agreement or crisis in trust, a moment of significant change, they ask: what can be learnt here, both in terms of understanding what happened and its context, and in terms of new, life-serving behaviour?

Restorative Circles engage non-adversarily with the complex and often intense reactions to what was done. They seek to create the conditions in which the conflict itself - attempting to express itself through painful choices, and often masked by them - reveals its message. They then seed new action.

One consequence of this is to see conflict not as something that needs to be changed or managed, but as the expression of crucial feedback about personal and communal well being.

In this short clip from an introduction to Restorative Systems, some angles of this sometimes surprising distinction are investigated.

One of the possibilities that Restorative practice opens up is that of responding to some of the complexities accompanying crime and broken agreements which the dominant justice systems are not able to contain.

An aspect of this complexity is the multiplicity of experiences those impacted by painful conflict go through. Many - if not all - of those present in the Circle may experience themselves as victims. Several may consider themselves victims of acts committed by others present.

In the search for more precise descriptions of what distinguishes those gathered in a Circle I coined the terms Author - for those that committed the act in question, Receiver - for those that bore the direct brunt of that act, and Conflict community - for those who deal with the act's indirect impact. 

These terms are not mere synonyms for the more common denominations of 'offender', 'victim' and 'supporter', but recognise the potentially multilayered experience of those gathered together, and the way they experience the distribution of harm and responsibility.

They also support us in looking through the over-simplification of fixed labels, with their tendency to reinforce stigmatization and separate people.

In this video I speak to some of these questions, seeking to clarify the way Restorative Circles offer new possibilities to allow the complexities of conflict their place and voice.

Hi. It's been a couple of months since I've written, as the end of the year and summer break (here in the southern hemisphere) came around.

Participating in festivals and relaxation time take me back to the informality of shared power and the formality of circles and cycles. I love the chance to be a student again that they provide. I find dynamics shared between all circle processes - from a meal with friends to a wake to a dance - and observing the multiplicity of ways these dynamics manifest strengthens my ability to serve them in any context I'm in.

This week, in Brazil, carnival is offering that once again. Millions of people are in the street, or in parades, jamming on these most ancient principles of collective, meaningful action. Jumping into these circles of celebration invites (or reveals as always present, just below the surface of modern life) community - the experience of mattering to each other, of being held in a web of mutuality.

What is true playfully is none the less so while mourning. This week, with sadness, the murder of a colleague from one of the first favela projects I worked in reminded me how life interrupted serves to unite us around - literally and figuratively - the loved one, and around those things that bond us. We reaffirm what we share, and strengthen the sense of cohesion, of generic humanity - both in mourning what has been lost, celebrating what was given and co-created and unique, and experiencing with heightened awareness what we still have.

In Germany and Poland last week I watched the same thing happening in the informal gatherings and Restorative Circles that unfolded within and around the learning events I participated in. Painful conflict emerged with puffed up chest, or down cast eyes. It seemed to defy the idea that something could be done. It can seem sometimes even to negate the idea of the Circle, because it represents the experience of not mattering. What looks to many of us like a hardening - in resistance, in pain, in fear, in denial, in shock, in anger - is then introduced to a very different experience - a Restorative encounter within a restorative context. And time and again we see - as I did last week - that 'hardness' become a singularly precise cry for understanding, for justice, for connection, for collaboration, for security... It becomes fluid, in the sense that it recognises the others, it wants to adapt to them. It becomes strong (rather than brittle), in the sense that it grounds itself in core values, and won't budge.

In a Semi-simulated Circle I facilitated during the Berlin Facilitator Practice module both the playfulness and the mourning came to the fore. It seems our relationships are too meaningful, our conflicts too serious, to deserve anything less. I often say there are many kinds of silence in the Circle - and imagine that in a future 'restorative culture' each would have their own name. There are also many kinds of laughter, many kinds of tears. The act that has brought us together - the 'crime' that bookmarks the tear in community life - is our call back to a co-existence in which we matter to each other, in which we impact each other, in which our choices are not just about us.

Meeting each other in this way means never being the same again. It means being changed. Just as the act in question changed us, so meeting in the Circle - if we do chose to meet, not simply to sit in the round - creates something new, something unique, that reformulates its own, ancient dynamics. The same ones that seem to bring people together in the widest array of situations, whenever something important to community life is at hand.

Restorative Circles also add a further strangeness - the powerful support and, at times, inconvenient artifice of a new ritual. That is, of a form that we both seek and are not accustomed to. The Author in the Berlin Circle resented and cheered the same facilitator questions within 2 minutes, laughing at, then with, the logic that informed them. Rather like me this weekend, one minute the gringo - disconnected and uncomfortable with the wild folly in the street, the next the carioca - 18 years since I arrived here, happily, intently co-responsible for the flow of carnival misrule.

During our time in the Bay Area two days were devoted to introducing Restorative Circles. This was done within the context of conscious choices our communities can make in response to crime, broken agreements and painful conflict. This clip from that conversation focuses on some of the questions and dynamics that we've found it valuable to be aware of.

Please share your thoughts and join the conversation. 

San Francisco Bay Area

The first presentations of this work in the US (in June 07), initiated at the invitation of Ike Lasater, were sponsored by ADRNC and by BayNVC, the largest and most active local Nonviolent Communication community that I'm aware of in the country. The partnership with BayNVC - our hosts once again this year - is, directly and indirectly, the source of most of the development of Restorative Circles in the US to date, and one I hold very dear.

Over the Hallowe'en / All Saint's Day period we were back in Oakland, offering an Intro and Facilitator Practice (FP) module to the burgeoning local RC community. Five days of exploration brought folks from as far away as Australia, where word on the work is beginning to spread, and a visit from Annett and Sabine, who made possible the talks and Intro in Berlin in August and are organising the February 2010 Facilitator Practice module there.

I was also able to visit a local school interested in setting up a Restorative System for students and staff, talk with Christine King - who has been actively bringing restorative practices to schools in Santa Cruz, as well as meet with the BayNVC Safer Communities team, who are offering RC practice groups locally and connecting with the wider RJ community in Oakland.

I was delighted to meet up again with Marissa Wertheimer, accompanied by several colleagues from Marin Mediation. For several years Marissa has been bringing her learning of RC to their Restorative Justice programme, and integrating elements of the process into the services they offer. My admiration for their work and dedication only grew during the time we learnt together.

We were also warmly welcomed by a piece in the San Francisco Examiner, in which Teresa Rose concluded: "Even more than avoidance of punishment, the restorative paradigm is now proven as a consistent basis for strengthening the ability of people to live together and deal with conflict in peace."

There were many other precious moments for me. I loved watching an 11 year old participant choose to stay for both the Intro and the FP and facilitate with gusto in the exercises; I loved experiencing an almost wordless Pre-Circle while 50 people looked on; I loved having Pat Seibert - long time supporter and colleague in this work - help me illustrate a point by facilitating as I role played; I loved hearing RCs described as 'relational magic' by those to whom the word magic has very ancient and very modern meaning. I loved what I'll call the 'hungry curiosity' in the eyes of so many who spent those days with us.

I loved the moments of getting quite lost inside and having a room full of support available....

Folks learning with us spoke of their desire to bring this to neighbourhood groups, to climate action work, to universities, to policing, to their families, to their classrooms, to the violence of racial discrimination, to spiritual communities, to prisons and those coming back out of them, to those practicing new forms of intimate relationship....

I was very moved to hear those who spoke to me tell how our choice to give the work away had been a key consideration in them coming, and inspired the spirit in which they were present. This is a key choice for me. It relates to the ancient and ownerless roots of the work we are sharing, to the way native communities preserved - without hiding, without compromising - such roots for so long, to the unrushed urgency of providing practical tools for peace to all, to the coming together of all those in a community to decide the future of that community.

A particular joy for me was being a guest of the Creature House, a collective living and loving home which I experienced as an extension of those elements I most treasure in Circles - open expression, co-creation of meaning, deep connection to our commonality, improvisation and creation, mutual gifting. Their welcome, warmth, food, song, hugs and loving company provided a seamless accompaniment and balance to the learning days.

Of the many other significant aspects of this trip, one more stands out: on the fifth day I left for Peru, and the Facilitator Practice module was lead by Gail Claspell, Becky Sutton, Duke Duchscherer and Martina Cavicchioli. Though this year has seen several folks in North America begin to share RC with others, this is the first time that I experienced a handover during a training, and was able to participate in planning a learning day I wouldn't be at. Very cool.

Peru

Three weeks after I was in Maranhão the same international network for the well-being of children and youth hosted the First World Congress on Restorative Juvenile Justice in Lima, Peru. I was invited to present at the event, which featured over 1000 participants from 62 countries. Together with several colleagues from Brazil - including Judges Egberto Penido and Eduardo Melo, and Monica Mumme, who made keynote adresses - our projects were highlighted as examples of the vigorous spread of the restorative ethos.

It was nourishing and enlightening to meet up with folks such as Ted Wachtel, from the IIRP, and Lode Walgrave and Ivo Aertsen, from Leuven University. Their support, company and experience is increasingly valuable to me. 

It was also the first time in over 2 years that a large number of the fast growing Brazilian RJ community were together in one place - and despite the international nature of the event, I spoke more Portuguese than Spanish or English while there. (Though this maybe in part because I don't speak Spanish). 

The wealth of development in RJ during this decade is one of the most hopeful signs of a sea change in human society that I'm aware of. Projects of every size and from a vast array of cultural perspectives are in expansion, and creating concrete examples of an ancient / new view of conflict, crime and healing.

At the same time the presiding tendency within most in this movement is to seek to preserve many of the aspects of less restorative approaches, which can promote a view of those involved in conflict as fixed in static roles with predefined experiences and wants.

I find sharing the possibilities that Restorative Circles opens up in such a context both challenging and very meaningful. I'm aware of how little I know, and how few opportunities I've had to connect with those working in other countries. At the same time I am so excited by the innovations RC can offer in the field of restorative practices and to the development of needs-based (rather than label- or role-based) systemic change. 

I felt very satisfied at being a small voice for such an approach at such a large event. The feedback the organisers received was enough to initiate dialogue on how to bring RCs to Peru in the near future.

An interview I did for the University that hosted us is available, in Spanish, online. In the future I will think twice before doing whatever a photographer asks.