Overcoming violence Conference

Report by Wendy Cater. March 4th 2004 Viewforth, Stirling.

Report by Wendy Cater.
March 4th 2004 Viewforth, Stirling.

Following Susan McColl’s visit to the Edinburgh conference I covered the second date in sunny Stirling.
 As with the Edinburgh conference the day was opened by Margaret McIntosh of the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Education Centre. I will not go into details here as they are fully covered in Susan’s report but I would like to move on and cover the inspiring and outstanding work shown in the day’s workshops. Although I got a taste of all the other projects during conversations with other delegates, I was only able to cover the work of Fair Play Training and Alloa Academy…

Tackling Violence through Play
Wilson Mc Duff - Fair Play Training.

Formed in the early 1990’s Fair Play is a Dundee-based charity that works throughout the country offering a broad range of play initiatives to both primary and secondary schools. Its aim is to positively influence children’s behaviour in the playground and class. The workshop was certainly different as Wilson got us all to play games, literally! He skilfully made the delegates demonstrate that it is possible to influence behaviour through play. The work of Fair Play is aimed at teaching children to communicate effectively in all ways e.g. verbally and/or through body language and in a non aggressive way. It’s not a new idea but it is very well presented and shows that we often overlook the simplest lessons learned from the past. Fair Play seem to have a very good way of bringing the playground back to basics, I was very impressed.

Straight Talking
Christine Neilson, Alloa Academy

This workshop was based on a power point presentation by Christine Neilson and Jaki Reid. Like many other schools, the Academy had to deal with conflicts and disputes on a daily basis, that would often cause ripples in the local community. While looking for ways to combat their problems they came across Peer Mediation. However the scale of the training and the time constraints were not suitable and they needed to try something more immediate as a less ambitious first step. They came up with Peer Support where senior pupils are trained to offer a confidential listening service for younger pupils. These senior pupils learn about confidentiality, child protection guidelines, communication skills, dealing with disclosures and communication with the school’s own support service. Pupils who give up their time are rewarded with outward bound trips and residential trips funded with Overcoming Violence Project funds. The school then started anger management courses for pupils at risk of exclusion and this culminated with the children running their own conference called “Keeping the Heid” at Tulliallan police college in December 2003. The work done by Christine and Jaki is nothing out of the ordinary as it appears to be the application of good common sense. As Christine said: “If the parents won’t come to school we go to them”. They now run a scheme where the local primaries identify children in P7 who will possibly find it difficult to start at the High School. These pupils are then invited to social events such as trips to bowling or the cinema during the holidays. Senior pupils befriend the youngsters and are there for them when they arrive at the school. I left the workshop inspired and will follow their work with great interest in years to come.

Overall the conference was a great success and I was inspired by what I had seen. My over-riding impression was that although we have many social problems in our schools and communities it is the type of people who ran these workshops who will ensure a better future for us all.

04 Mar 2004