Transforming Conflict into Creative Responses with Rosa Zubizarreta

Living Love

Conflict is a part of life. Instead of avoiding conflict or allowing it to split communities into polarized sides, how can we transform tension and conflict into creative responses and unity? My guest, Rosa Zubizarreta, author of From Conflict to Creative Collaboration, shares examples of innovative citizen engagement processes that allow people to feel a sense of psychological safety in speaking up and feeling heard. We learn about how Citizen Councils were used in Austria to address complex challenges - shifting from two polarized sides to find creative solutions. Rosa offers suggestions of approaches that anyone can use to help a group hold tension and conflict, including Dynamic Facilitation, Restorative Circles, and Empathy Circles.

Resources and links:

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

Rosa’s web site - DiaPraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in Democracy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

From Conflict to Creative Collaboration - Rosa’s book

Scaling Deliberation - Austrian Citizen Councils - article by Rosa

The Co-Intelligence Institute - Promoting innovations in collective wisdom, co-creativity, and collaborative governance. Tom Atlee, research director.

Citizens - book by Jon Alexander

Restorative Circles - An approach to working with conflict, developed by Dominic Barter

EmpathyCircles.com

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives