Facilitate to De-Escalate

In any environment in which a group of people are collaborating, conflict is a natural occurrence. Whether in work collectives, community discussions, or educational settings, differing opinions, personalities, or worldviews lead to tension. However, all of that does not have to be detrimental. This is where the role of a facilitator becomes relevant. A facilitator’s objective is to make sure that all participants feel heard while guiding the group toward common goals, aims, and paths.

Disagreements are a natural part of group dynamics. Facilitators can prevent conflicts by supporting a culture of active listening, encouraging participants to understand each other’s perspectives before jumping to conclusions. When misunderstandings occur, a facilitator can clarify or summarize positions to prevent misinterpretations and enable mutual respect. By identifying common ground and clearly articulating areas of disagreement, facilitators can help participants remain focused on shared objectives rather than differences. In instances where emotions run high, a facilitator can de-escalate tension by simply acknowledging the conflict. Naming the issue allows participants to step back and gain perspective. Facilitators can also suggest breaks so that individuals have time to cool off and reflect. If necessary, they can facilitate individual conversations to better understand conflicting viewpoints, fostering a sense of being heard and valued. Most importantly, however, as Elja Plíhal and Zuzana Kašparová taught us during a workshop on facilitation, the crux of facilitation lies in the belief that the behavior of one is a symptom of a dynamic of the whole. The role of the facilitator is to decode and navigate that dynamic. The facilitation we learned about provides an alternative to excluding, turning away, or punishing an individual without involving the community concerned. That is why it plays an important role in restorative or transformative justice.

The summer camp in the context of the 2024 Biennale Matter of Art was attended by children from different social classes: children from Prague 7 (a very gentrified part of the capital), children of Ukrainian refugees, and children from the neighborhood of Přívoz in Ostrava (a socially problematic area of the city). Inevitably there were conflicts, which only mirrored society-wide tensions. The conflicts that took place between the children were resolved through facilitation techniques and the restorative approach of the camp counselors. The conflicting parties were given space to tell each other their side of the story, then those affected by the conflict could describe the impact it had on them, and finally both sides could work together to devise ways in which they could continue to function and communicate with each other. All this took place under the guidance of adult facilitators. Thanks to them, not only were a girl from an upper-middle-class background and a girl from a very marginalized background who struggled to understand each other able to coexist and work in a group, but the whole group did not fall apart as a result of their conflict.

We found the way in which our mediators / summer camp counselors approached the conflict to be very inspiring at a time when we feel that the survival of cultural organizations is a question of cooperation and agreement with a wide range of people, initiatives, and organizations. Finding common ground and navigating perceived differences seems to us to be important not only in the cultural sphere but also within society at large. In our societies—for reasons such as gentrification, educational systems that reproduce social inequality, or the unequal distribution of resources in big cities versus other regions of the country—there are fewer and fewer spaces where people from different class backgrounds can meet and interact. Through the camp we created a space for children from different cultural and class backgrounds to encounter each other. After the camp, when I asked one girl from Prague her opinion, she called the kids from Ostrava “weird,” “strange.” It may seem that this was a failure of the project, the reinforcement of social stereotypes, racism, and so on. However, I remember meeting and coexisting with children in elementary school that seemed “different” and “strange” to me—kids from very different backgrounds. I only made sense of their behavior and attitude years afterward. But do the kids of today, who move in class-homogeneous spaces, encounter such unfamiliarity at all? Is the experience of such discomfort not important in order for our public space to be democratic, heterogeneous, and inclusive? Should we not also learn to live with people we think are “strange”? Is this the role of culture today when other institutions fail at it?