Common Coherence: working with conflict for sustainable futures

Create, Spyros Tsiknas and Dr Eve Olney are delighted to present Common Coherence: Working with conflict for sustainable futures, a presentation / workshop drawing from Non Violent Communication (NVC) that aims to create a sense of collective understanding and empowerment to participants who experience conflictual situations within collective work and collaborative practices. It is developed for those interested in creating ecological sustainable futures such as participatory artists working with communities, activist groups, collaborative creative practices and commoning collective assemblies.

There is a high level of complexity within the dynamics of groups that deal with complex social, cultural and environmental issues. Yet, there tends not to be a specific focus on how collectives can sustain themselves within their idiosyncratic group dynamics. Most have experienced conflictual situations which can result in self/group-exclusion and fragmentation. There is a need for creating a common field of existence across different perspectives in order to nurture a practicing reflective process and sense of coherence in terms of the inter-relationship between individual and group.

The workshop combines the basic principles of Non Violent Communication (Needs and Emotions), with methods of performing arts and reflexive critique. It aims to build new fields of understanding based upon vivid, experiential knowledge using role-play, based upon tacit, real life scenarios. It establishes how knowledgeably working with conflict and difference can create sustainable futures.

Spyros Tsiknas is a transdisciplinary researcher in the field of Art & Sustainability. He studied Electrical Electronic Engineering in the University of Wales (BENG, MSC) and Performing arts in the Drama School of Embros (BA). He investigates pathways where art and science meet, environmental and social issues coexist within complex dynamic systems. Currently he investigates how role play and theater methods meet NVC (Non Violent Communication).

Within the frame work of Role Play for Non Violent Action, he and Dr. Eve Olney made a presentation of the “Concept” at Create Networking Day, and a nine hour workshop for the SPARE ROOM Project. He has completed the intermediate training course for NVC. He has coordinated Art & Sustainability workshops in refuge camps in collaboration with NGOs. He has written and directed several Energy Resilient Theratrical Events that were presented in theaters and in public spaces. He is a member of ALONI Social Collaborative Entrepreneurship that focuses on local social environmental problems in a neighborhood at the centre of Athens. He was a resident in the Common Ground project (Cork – Budapest)  which was for socially engaged arts through participatory procedures.

Dr. Eve Olney is a socially engaged artist, activist, curator, educator and practice-based researcher. Her praxis incorporates a feminist ethnographic approach to social change through creative methodologies in constructing alternative social imaginaries. She co-produced (with artist Kate O’Shea) the social arts programme SPARE ROOM (Irish Arts Council) and produced the Irish/Athenian social arts project Inhabiting the Bageion: Architecture as Critique, 2017. She currently leads a creative social living, working, learning scheme, called The Living Commons and has five social programmes in development (2021, Irish Arts Council), entitled Living Commons: Reconfiguring the Social. She is a founding member of Radical Institute with Dr Krini Kafiris, which provides mentorship and training to those exploring how the arts and cultural practice can promote and sustain progressive change and social impact. They are currently in collaboration with Sample Studios in Radical Institute at Sample Studios, Studios of Sanctuary, 2021-2022, (Irish Cultural Foundation). She is a member of Cork Democratic School, a self- directed learning school in Cork. Her latest publications can be found in journal Passepartout New Infrastructures: Performative Infrastructures in the Art Field, 2020, and the book, Enlightenment and Ecology – The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century, Black Rose Books, 2021.