Program on Dispute Resolution - Research Projects

CROSS-CULTURAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN MULTICULTURAL VANCOUVER: USING THE CREATIVE ARTS TO BUILD BRIDGES ACROSS DIFFERENCES

Summary of Proposed Research

Vancouver is experiencing increasing community conflicts related to race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, social class and other differences. Many of these conflicts escalate because of a lack of accessible, culturally-sensitive processes to address them. These conflicts add to personal, family and community stress and negatively affect community quality of life and peoples' sense of self-efficacy and security. They also raise questions about access to justice because many conflicts are not formally framed and so never enter legal or court channels. Unchecked, these conflicts can lead to additional problems, personal and community distress, and ultimately violence.

Conflict resolution processes effective in multicultural settings are urgently needed to address community conflicts in Vancouver. The creative arts are important resources in building cross-cultural conflict resolution processes because they provide ways for cultural signs and symbols to be communicated, invite and normalize a focus on identity and meaning-making processes, and draw on individual and group capacities for imagining creative solutions to difficult community problems.

This project will bring together mediation practitioners and educators, representatives of community agencies and members of the arts community to develop creative new approaches to cross-cultural conflicts. These approaches will be piloted in immigrant-serving agencies, community settings, and through community dialogues. An evaluation of the effectiveness of these processes will be undertaken concurrently with the research.

This project will

• support new university-community-arts partnerships to contribute to the capacities of Vancouver community agencies to serve multicultural populations;
• build connections among community agencies, arts organizations and conflict resolution practitioners concerned to address cross-cultural conflict in Vancouver;
• demonstrate the feasibility of designing creative conflict resolution processes that function effectively across cultural boundaries;
• provide cutting-edge opportunities for mediators and dialogue facilitators from multiple cultural backgrounds to prevent and address community conflicts;
• develop a set of best practices for creative cross-cultural conflict resolution;
• advance theory and practice about the nexus of conflict resolution and the arts for use in other settings in Vancouver, and in other communities in Canada and around the world.

Current activities:

Four focus groups were held in summer 2004 with artists, intercultural consultants, and mediators. Results from these focus groups have informed next steps including

• a literature review and bibliography on arts and cross-cultural conflict resolution, to be completed in spring 2005
• a pilot project evaluating the use of photography to map new arrivals' experiences in Vancouver and catalyze dialogue with local residents
• a moveable feast, bringing BC mediators together with artists from a range of media to identify past successes and future opportunities for using arts in cross-cultural conflict resolution
• an invitational conference bringing international experts together with local scholars to develop a detailed research agenda for this area