The Mint House was grateful and delighted to receive funding from Westhill for a twelve-month programme of research and practice dialogues, exploring challenges and creative opportunities for embedding restorative practice across diverse sectors and in faith institutions. We think there’s much to be done in this area that can help foster healthy relationships, strengthen connections and prevent and resolve conflict.
The first two dialogues took place during 27th & 28th November when 20 people came together at Rewley House, Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education. This number included 14 external guests, 5 Mint House trustees (two of whom were formal dialogue participants) and 1 facilitator. We had a rich mix of participants, combining some highly experienced restorative practitioners, leaders, trainers and researchers with others coming fresh to restorative practice but with expertise in areas including culture change, systems change and leadership development.
We designed the dialogues with care to ensure equality of voice and good exchanges between people familiar with and new to restorative practice. The conversation was electric!! We are still digesting and processing the fantastic insights shared. However, both at the dialogues and since, participants have shared their appreciation of being part of the discussions, commenting in particular on how unusual – and helpful – they found it to be in conversation with others from diverse disciplines and who brought a fresh perspective. Here are some examples:
thank you so much for including me and for collating such an interesting group of people
Thank you for the invitation to join the Dialogues. I really enjoyed meeting you, the Mint House team, the community of practitioners and wider critical friends. What a fabulous group of humans you gathered! I particularly enjoyed getting an insight into restorative practice work and its impact. I look forward to sharing my reflections in feedback.
I really enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to learn more about this world, and how it connects to mine!
Day 2 of the dialogue: Belinda Hopkins, restorative practice specialist and pioneer, demonstrates how restorative practice works to bridge gaps in understanding between people.
Thank you Westhill!
