Storytelling against Polarization Erasmus Project

Project Title

Storytelling against Polarization

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Social dialogue; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND/NEEDS
Most Europeans believe their countries are more polarised than 10 years ago, and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “Us” versus “Them.” This phenomenon has become especially prominent in the countries of this consortium (the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey) in the last decade.
The more polarized a society, the more people view difficult issues through a tribal lens rather than in terms of the common good of all. People grow less able to comprehend opposing views, they get increasingly prone to regarding dissenters as incompetent and depraved, or at worst motivated by bad intentions.
Despite growing polarization in the selected countries, common grounds still exist and this can give hope that creating an efficient intervention is possible. People belonging to opposing groups often overestimate their differences („false polarization”), believing that the two groups are farther apart in their views than they actually are.
There is a need for tools that can effectively deal with intergroup conflicts, that offer low-barrier and cost efficient ways to engage ordinary citizens more meaningfully, that create opportunities to foster empathy by exposing people to others with different backgrounds and beliefs to their owns.

OUR OBJECTIVES
Our intention is to develop methods and materials that could be used to reduce polarization in the local communities. The developed methods/materials should be easy to sustain and to be upscaled and useful for a wide range of adult educators, organizations, or even by the general population (without the need for trainers/facilitators).

METHOD
We chose applied storytelling to reduce polarization as trainings/games using stotyelling methods:
– helps to build trust between participants and raise their interest in each other
– invites people to share their subjective experiences with others that has the potential to touch others on a personal level
– avoids theoretical debates, exchanges of beliefs about how lives should be lived – that could raise resistance and hostility
– offers equal status for participants (no story is more important than another)
– gives opportunities for the participants to uncover shared identities
– offers techniques to deal with topics that divide groups in a non-offensive way

ACTIVITIES
To achieve our goals we develop:
– a study on polarization and a method book on how storytelling can be used to polarization that could be used as a source book for developing further interventions
– a storytelling tabletop game that help players/participants to finding common grounds
– a storytelling training toolkit that help players/participants to bond and build trust but which also dives into difficult topics (the ones that cause tension between the groups)
– an Open Education Resource that gives access to all the materials

TARGET GROUPS
Our primary target groups are adult educators/storytellers/community workers and those professionals whose work is linked to conflict resolution and community building (e.g. faith communities, municipalities, neighborhood organizations). We also target high school/university teachers of sociology, political science, pedagogy, psychology, community development.
Our secondary target group involves adult learners (laymen interested in the topic of our trainings, playing with storytelling games).

INTENDED SHORT AND LONG TERM IMPACT ON THE TARGET GROUPS

Adult educators (and other stakeholders) will have access (and will be trained) to a method and to a game they can use in their work to decrease distrust and negative feelings between group members, to increase understanding, empathy, communication between participants from opposing groups. They will also have comprehensive source books (about polarization and about the possible use of storytelling techniques to reduce polarization) that they can use to build their own interventions on.
Adult learners involved in storytelling groups and in the storytelling game will experience the above mentioned impacts (decrease in distrust, increase in the understanding of self and others, etc) on a personal level. They will also have access to a game that they can play at anytime with anyone without the need for any previous training or the presence of facilitators.
In the long run, adult educators and other stakeholders can have access to new materials and methods to reduce polarization in the local community.
During the project’s lifetime we will involve 12-16 adult educators and 160-184 adult learners through pilot workshops, personal interviews, focus groups in the development of the intellectual outputs.
We will reach an additional 280 people from our target groups through local and international multipliers and more than 10.000 people through our promotional activities linked to the project activities.
Sustainability will be ensured through the STOP Platform and European platforms and networks.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 281026 Eur

Project Coordinator

Storytelling Centre & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Associacio La Xixa Teatre
• Sagapò A.P.S.
• Hasat
• Képes Alapítvány – a szociális és érzelmi készségfejlesztésért