Stop! Storytelling against Polarisation

How can you use storytelling as an intervention to reduce polarisation? We have already put this into practice a number of times, for example in Amsterdam North with two residents’ groups that were in conflict with each other but also in Palestine-Israel. We are now starting a European project to develop transferable tools for this.

Countering polarisation

We do this project in cooperation with organisations from countries and regions where (political and nationalistic) polarisation is the order of the day, such as Turkey, Hungary, Italy and Catalonia. But also in the Netherlands, polarisation is never far away. Think of the groups in our society that are diametrically opposed to each other, such as the Zwarte Piet debate, farmers versus ‘climate geeks’ and ‘virus wackos’ versus people with a huge fear of corona.

With storytelling, we provide tools to bring people together and make them look at what connects them, instead of what sets them against each other.

Results

The Stop! Project will produce, among other things, a board game, but also a handbook with methods for community and youth workers who want to bring groups together.