The Forgiveness Project collects and shares real stories of forgiveness, transformation and hope to build understanding, encourage reflection and enable people to reconcile and move forward from pain, hurt and trauma. Their Forgiveness Conversations examine different themes related to the complex and highly contested subject of forgiveness. They aim to provide a safe place where people can explore difference and division, as well as sharing their own stories and experiences.
As hurts and grievances extend across generations in longstanding and escalating global conflicts, the issue of forgiveness seems more relevant than ever, however hard this is.
Duncan Morrow, Hanneke Coates, Angela Findlay and Marian Liebmann explore the impact of trauma and war on their own families and communities. Ranging over war crimes and conflicts in Northern Ireland, Indonesia and Germany, they consider what it takes for people to take the journey from dehumanisation to re-humanisation.
This is one of the events in a special weekend of activity looking at endings and beginnings (a theme which will also be part of other festival events in 2016). It is part of Bristol800: a programme throughout 2016 marking significant anniversaries in the city and what they mean for Bristol now and into the future. Bristol800 is an initiative of Bristol Cultural Development Partnership (Arts Council England, Bristol City Council and Business West).
In association with/
Panel
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Hanneke Coates
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Angela Findlay
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Marian Liebmann
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Duncan Morrow
Hanneke Coates was born just before the Second World War on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where her father was a tea planter. After the invasion of Java by the Japanese in 1942, she was forced to spend three and a half years of her childhood in one of over 300 concentration camps based around the Archipelago. She has recently been to Nagasaki to the unveiling of a memorial to commemorate the POWs and to explore making peace with her own experiences.
Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer. Her Anglo-German roots, plus years of working as an artist in German and English prisons, have given her first hand experience of what it means to be, or to feel, ‘guilty’. In her talks and writings Angela explores the role of art in finding pathways to apology, forgiveness and redemption. Her personal process of discovering and coming to terms with the role her German grandfather, a decorated Wehrmacht General, played in WW2 mirrors Germany’s collective process of dealing with its past. Angela is currently writing a book about guilt and shame and how they can get transmitted across generations. Follow her on Twitter @angelas_talks
Marian Liebmann was born to parents who were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and this has informed her extensive work in art therapy, mediation and restorative justice. She has worked with offenders and victims of crime and was director of Mediation UK. She has trained many people in restorative justice in the UK and several African and East European countries, and has given presentations at UN Crime Congresses. She also worked for many years as an art therapist in central Bristol, and runs workshops on using art with anger and conflict. She is involved in helping Bristol to become a restorative city. She has written/ edited 12 books, including Art Therapy and Anger and Restorative Justice: How It Works. Marian is a member of a Second Generation group, which discusses how their parents’ involvement in the Holocaust has affected them.
Duncan Morrow is Director of Community Engagement and a lecturer in Politics at the University of Ulster who has actively sought to address sectarianism in Northern Ireland for the last 20 years. Follow him on Twitter @duncan_morrow
