CREATIVE DIALOGUE

Encounters offer creative solutions to community engagement and involvement. Since March 2003, we have worked with a wide range of service deliverers, agencies, arts organisations and voluntary groups, who are involved in conflict resolution, action planning, consultation, audience development, community cohesion, design, building and open space development.

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Combatants for Peace: UK Tour

September 2011

Encounters are the UK hosts for Combatants for Peace - a movement of Israeli and Palestinian former combatants now engaged in a non-violent struggle to resolve issues of conflict between Israel and Palestine. Following on from the successful UK tour in 2010, we are pleased to be able to invite another group of 16 members of Combatants for Peace from Israel and Palestine to the UK September 3-10th 2011. We have secured funding for the trip from The Evan Cornish Foundation, and J.A Clark Charitable Trust and will be working again in association with Amnesty International UK.

“Amnesty International were delighted to work with Combatants for Peace in 2010 and to support them in our shared aim of seeing Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully together with their human rights and dignity respected and protected. They are remarkable, tenacious and inspiring individuals and as collective an example of what being the change you want to see in the world looks like.”
Kristyan Benedict – Campaigns Manager, Amnesty International UK

Public Events - No Victory for Violence evenings
Wednesday, September 7th 7.30pm - Civic Hall, Totnes, Devon
Friday, September 9th 7pm - Amnesty International, Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA

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Creative Partnerships Hunters Bar
January – July 2009

Creative Partnerships is the Government's flagship creative learning programme, designed to develop the skills of young people across England, raising their aspirations and equipping them for their futures.

Rules and Stuff: Hunters Bar Junior School

Rules and Stuff, was our Creative Partnerships project at Hunters Bar school in Sheffield. Artist/Architects from Sheffield Now delivered the project with Encounters and worked with pupils to look at how we use and shape our spaces and how the physical environment influences and effects learning.

Together, the students, teachers and artists identified two projects for the school which ran until July 2009. These two projects included design ideas for indoor and outdoor 'structures' to support creative learning. The designs for the indoor structure followed the principle of a simple chest of drawers, but hidden inside it were special guides, objects and structures to dramatically transform the use and design of the classroom.

The outdoor structures were designed to encourage students to feel more connected to themselves, more connected to others, and more connected to the world. The current designs were for a modular structure which can be broken apart and connected in different ways to enable and encourage creative learning and teaching in the schools outdoor spaces.

Documenting Change : KS3 Inclusion Unit

Artist Ben Yeger delivered this self reflective creative project that involved working with staff and four pupils to chart, document, realise and then celebrate the small yet significant changes pupils make during their stay at the unit. The project recognised and reflected on the process of universal and personal change, and pupils created video/drama/writing that shared these own observations and self-reflections with others in a creative way.

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City Road Placemaking
December 2008 – March 2009

Encounters were on the streets of City Road in Sheffield wheeling a Bureau of Exchange up and down the road, allowing people to add memories, stories, directions and maps about City Road and how it connects with people's everyday lives, past, present and future. Artist Rupert Clamp joined Ruth Ben-Tovim at Encounters to devise the project and Rupert spent time talking to residents and users of City Road, engaging them in activities to capture their views about what the area means to them and what it should be in the future. Encounters then ran workshops which involved council employees, representatives of community groups and venues, and people who took part in the on-street consultation.

The project was commissioned by Sheffield City Council with the aim of bringing an innovative and creative approach to community consultation and a way of understanding what City Road means to residents and users. Encounters work will feed into the Council's wider City Road Placemaking Project aimed at helping build an identity for and bring improvements to City Road.

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What's Your Wybourn Way?
Summer 2008

Encounters have been working with residents and other partners on the Wybourn estate in Sheffield, to deliver a creative project that unearths and reveals personal legacies and histories of the area and involves people in mapping and sharing their everyday lives and experiences. The project also kick starts a process of creative community involvement in the developments and improvements planned for the estate over the next ten years.

During the summer, residents of all ages were invited to take Encounters artists on a 1:1 walk down memory lane pointing out personal landmarks around Wybourn. We walked with 43 residents ranging in ages from 8 – 76. We are now back in Wybourn to feedback these stories, maps and images to the wider community in a temporary installation/event that will see us moving into and transforming a house on the estate. A group of architecture students from the University of Sheffield Architecture department have joined the project team and will be delivering a series of interventions and creative consultation activities linked to planned improvements. The cross over between art and architecture practice will be explored in this collaboration between Encounters and the team of Architects.

Artist Sorrel Muggridge has joined the Encounters team for the project.

The project is commissioned by Parkways, Great Places Housing Group who are the new social landlord for Wybourn, Richmond Park and Park Hill in Sheffield (www.greatplaces.org.uk).

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