Playground for Peace

Peacebuilding should be fun. 

Warfare is serious business, whether it’s military or metaphorical; it’s characterized by anger, fear, and a cold sense of profound superiority – enough to convince the soldiers that they’re justified in trying to destroy the other side. 

Peacebuilding can often be affected by those energies because we’re focusing on ending all the warfare and we’re distressed by its many casualties. As a result, we tend to approach it with sober intensity and we treat it like work. 

But what if we treated it like play? 

What if our goal, when drawing people together across perplexing divides, was less about getting them to see and discard their former closed-mindedness toward each other, and more about getting them to laugh together? Would that hasten the process of building peace? 

We’ve been playing with that concept more and more at Summit Stages. We like words like “dignity” and “dialogue.” They convey crucial concepts that are fundamental to lasting peace. At the same time, we are coming to a deeper awareness that stress is one of the pervasive characteristics of the world we now inhabit. People are longing for a breather, a loosening of their shoulders and an easing of their minds. They need conversations far from the shadow of cataclysm. They need to rediscover joy. And that’s what peacebuilding can be all about. 

That’s why doing a musical together can be one of the most effective ways of building bridges. And it doesn’t need to stop – or even start – there. Anytime we can get people with differing perspectives together and engage them in creating something that is both building and joyous, we’ve won a round for peace. We’re going to maintain that victory by teaching skills that help them connect in real, healthy, and mutually beneficial ways. And we’ll do that without furrowed brows and preoccupation about using just the right words. We’ll do it in a way that entertains as much as it inspires, lightening our hearts and unblocking our minds. 

With that in mind, I’m excited to tell you about our newest initiative: an improv and collaborative communication course. We’re launching it in cooperation with Na’atosi Oko’siksi Arts Society next month in Cardston Alberta, with Jerry First Charger teaching improv and myself focusing on collaborative communication. Jerry learned improv decades ago, so he could incorporate it into a personal development program he created for a correctional center. It gave him a natural way to teach inmates to focus on positive energy, and to see failure as something you can recover and learn from, rather than as a reason for being beaten down. It helped them to laugh again. 

I’ll be weaving in some key concepts from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, something I’ve found to be a profoundly valuable tool in my own life. I’ll be giving credit to Rosenberg, but I’m not using “nonviolence” in the title because I’m wanting a break from addressing violence, even in the negative. We’re not focusing on avoiding violence. We’re creating a playground for practicing peace,  where we can learn the skills of joyful communication while laughing at the ways we sometimes get it wrong. This is step 1 in a two-step process, but I’m going to write about step 2 another time. For now, wish us luck and we’d appreciate your prayers or supportive vibes as we prepare to launch our program April 2. 

Also: I’d love your feedback on this poster. Would this speak to you? What could help it pull you in better? 

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