Across our social and political landscape, the fractures of polarisation grow deeper. In the last few years, we’ve seen the country divided over Brexit, COVID, education, policing, immigration, and many more issues. Tribes form not just around ideas but identities, fortified by misinformation, mistrust and fear. We hold different views to our family, friends and colleagues but are unsure how to voice them. Or tension builds in these relationships because of clumsy conversations. In this context, forming real and lasting relationships with people we disagree with can feel incredibly challenging.
We are reconcilers, and this means we prioritise building and maintaining relationships across differences. This is not about smoothing over conflict. It is about holding the fire of disagreement in a container strong enough to withstand the heat; one shaped by resilience, values, and deep listening.
Rooted in peacemaking, our depolarisation work combines online and in-person training, collaborations with other organisations such as Israel-Palestine educators Solutions Not Sides, and events that centre the theme of polarisation and dialogue across difference.
Our training equips participants to bridge divides with accessible language, tools for engaging echo chambers, dialogue skills, and practices of belonging. It includes pair work, embodied exercises, conflict mapping, deep listening and more. We aim to arm people with the emotional resilience and practical skills needed to bridge divides in their own contexts - from families and social groups to faith communities, activist organisations and corporate environments.
We invite those sitting in the discomfort of division, those seeking to understand rather than retreat, and those curious about how inner and outer transformation meet in practice to join us at our next depolarisation training session or speaker-led event.
Community leaders | Educators and teachers | HR professionals | Religious leaders or faith-based facilitators | Anyone interested in civic engagement, democracy, or social cohesion
Rebecca leads on our community reconciliation programmes: managing Journey of Hope with our Reconcilers Together partnership, and facilitating our Conflict Coaching, Facilitation Training, Listening Processes, and Peacemaking workshops. With over 20 years of experience in community based reconciliation, training, facilitation, activism and mentoring, Rebecca has a passion for curating spaces that encourage understanding and enable shared wisdom and for equipping and inspiring faith leaders to restore relationships. She holds accreditation in restorative justice, trauma informed practice, mediative facilitation and is currently studying Spiritual Direction. She moved from California to London in 2001 to study at the London School of Theology where she received her BA in Theology & Worship. Her past employers include Oasis Trust, XLP Youth Charity, and Tearfund. She lives in South London with her husband and twin daughters.
Jo is Programme Manager of People of the Earth refugee programmes St Ethelburga’s. She collaborates with individuals and organisations to bring refugee and non-refugee together building empathy and understanding one conversation and one action, at a time. She hosts and co-ordinates events to promote inclusion and leads on the production of Listen to the World Open Mic. A programme where themes of home, displacement, belonging and community meet through music and the traditions and talents of migrants and refugees find a home among local artists. Jo has worked in the non-profit sector for over twenty years. She holds a BA (Hons) in Education and a Diploma in group facilitation, conflict resolution and counselling (NAOS).
Tarot is Co-Director of St Ethelburga’s. Previously COO, she played a key role in developing our deep adaptation, sacred activist, and refugee camp volunteering programmes. She is currently developing an exciting new strand bringing communities together to create nature corridors across large tracts of farmland. At this time of ecological unravelling, she is interested in the meeting point of large-scale collective action with individual values and transformation. She loves working with diverse groups, bringing people together in shared passion and service. Previously Tarot used collaborative art-making as a tool for change in the fields of LGBT+ rights and migration, leading projects in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ireland. She also was involved in establishing, and still maintains close ties with the Bushman Heritage Museum, working with indigenous artists in South Africa. She loves night walks, sleeping outdoors, spending time on her boat on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and walking in Epping Forest near where she lives. She is passionate about living a closer relationship with the Earth. She thrives in challenging environments, and learned many of her practical skills while building her own house!