Cranford Review 2019

Seeds of Peace Dialogue 2019
Seeds of Peace was a camp dedicated to a form of discussion called ‘dialogue’. Myself, Kavleen
Aurora and around a dozen other students from different schools around the country took part in the
Seeds programme and I think I can speak for everyone who took part when I say that it was a brilliant
success. The programme was quite intensive, with quite long days and lots of emotional discussions
with topics such as; the education system, Brexit, religion, nationality, identity, stereotypes, euthanasia,
family and gender.
The facilitators - the staff - created a warm, comfortable environment which brought together students
from all over the country and allowed them to talk about matters very personal to them in a way that we
never could amongst friends, family or anyone else in our day to day lives. Dialogue, the mysterious
word that I heard so much about from previous Seeds (students who went previous years to the UK
programme) had an extremely elusive definition and I could not find any information that satisfied me
even after hours trawling through pages and pages of information.
I’ll do my best to explain this very complicated topic, though I cannot recommend enough to those
that read this to discover dialogue for themselves firsthand. Dialogue, to me, is a type of discussion
that, at its best, allows those who participate to share their experiences, emotions and beliefs without
the fear of attack and with the knowledge that those around them are going to offer support and advice
before anything else. At Seeds we sat in a circle - a shape that includes everyone - and began to talk
about topics that we would like to discuss over the course of the weekend. Apart from many hours of
dialogue (which was by far my favourite part) we also did lots of physically active ‘group challenges’
and took part in preplanned activities that the facilitators set up for us.
The most memorable activity for me was one based on identity. Each of us was given 9 cards with
different categories on them, such as; sexuality, gender, nationality, political affiliation and religion.
We filled out those categories with answers that applied to us and then the activity began. Each ‘round’
we went around the circle, without disclosing our card to anyone else, and dropped the card which
was least important to us. We did this continuously until each person had only one card left and then
went around discussing what was on our last card and why it was most important to us. I think it was
an extremely sobering activity as it allowed us to properly define our identity and realise what part of
us was most important.
Overall, the Seeds programme was an amazing success and I’m already in contact with the staff in the
hopes that I will be able to go again next year.
Alex Hickey (year 10)
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