Extending Empathy - A Network to Exchange Tools/Methodologies and Processes from Design, Performance and Restorative Justice

This network will share knowledge about empathetic tools and processes from 3 different creative communities - Design, Performance and RJ - via 4 planned workshops with international speakers. The ambition is to share case studies, findings and improve knowledge of best practice regarding how best to build empathic processes.

Crime, conflict and ineffective delivery of justice detract from the quality of individual/collective life, disrupting social cohesion. One response has been RJ. This brings those harmed by crime or conflict, and those responsible for the harm, into direct communication, enabling all affected to engage in empathetic processes that play a part in repairing harm to find a positive way forward. RJ lets victims tell offenders the real impact of their crime, get answers, receive an apology and get on with their lives. It also lets offenders understand and take responsibility. RJ has some elements in common with co-creation and participatory approaches employed in design, as well as those delivered via performance studies within the criminal justice system by members of the Arts Alliance. How all these different specialists use 'empathetic processes' is the crux and deserves further exploration. The workshops will provide a context that promotes new connections/understandings about empathetic processes by practitioners currently working with diverse communities. In sharing existing insights from different practice-based styles of engagement, the network's workshops will build community capacity and help subject specialists and the communities they engage with better understand the issue of empathy. In particular, how creative strategies may be used in relationships to help deliver conflict management or to aid engagement with building empathy in groups who had previously not shown remorse, for example. Furthermore, sharing information about what have been called 'proxy processes' (traditionally understood as a process whereby some members of a decision-making body delegate their voting power to other members of the same body to vote in their absence) delivered by arts practitioners working within criminal justice system in the UK will occur. Such processes appear to play a significant role in creating empathic opportunities that help kick-start healing, and subsequent engagement with RJ by victims and offenders

Sharing good practice is needed because there are real obstacles to implementing RJ, including fear of offenders in being involved in the first place, resistance and suspicion by one or more of the parties involved (offenders, victims, practitioners, other community members with a vested interest) and a lack of the skills to offer empathetic tools or even access to proxy processes. Given that empathy and how to establish and apply it, is often the unspoken question of RJ, the workshops will address how to engage participants in empathetic processes. Design usefully engages with building empathy through role-playing, drawing on tools and techniques from theatre to engage users as partners in participatory design activity. Design and performance go beyond the creation of products and into the field of social innovation, including strategic processes of engagement with hard to reach groups or communities. Cardboard Citizens, Clean Break and the Geese Theatre Company are exemplar theatre organisations that teach empathetic processes to prisoners and have much tacit knowledge to share with other creatives.

Different creative communities work using a variety of diverse interventions to reduce alienation, build empathy and/or catalyse effective community connections, but rarely do they have opportunities to share understandings which will be the central focus of this network. It is needed because what works to improve empathetic engagement will also contribute to improving social cohesion.

This project will deliver new opportunities to build empathy in hard to reach groups, which will ultimately:

1. Substantially reduce some offender repeat offending;
2. Increase offences brought to justice (compared to Traditional Criminal Justice - TCJ)
3. Reduce crime victims' post-traumatic stress symptoms & related costs
4. Increase satisfaction (with justice) for both victims & offenders compared to TCJ
5. Reduce crime victims' desire for violent revenge against their offenders
6. Reduce the costs of criminal justice, when used as diversion from TCJ; &
7. Reduce recidivism more than prison (adults) does or as well as prison (youths) does. Adapted from Sherman and Strang (2007)

The impact of performance upon victims and perpetrators of crime is also significant. Theatre groups such as Cardboard Citizens, Clean Break, the Geese Theatre Company, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Shakespeare Behind Bars and the Performing Arts Learning and Teaching Innovation Network (PALATINE) have already shown that their work develops empathy in the roles and experiences of others by:

1. Building confidence and communication skills
2. Developing personal, social, artistic and professional skills such a trust and team work that impact on their lives and their engagement with wider society, including in some cases, the reduction of recidivism.

Similarly, there is significant evidence of design processes, methods and tools generating empathy for users. Using design probes, focus groups, observation and shadowing, video ethnography and immersive role-play, designers gain empathic understanding of the impact of their design actions upon users and others that come into contact with their design outputs.

Overall tools from performance and design may enhance RJ practitioner delivery. Also performance/design may better understand problems posed by RJ and respond. New ideas e.g. short drama courses aimed at RJ professionals or new design-led action research based interventions (linked to future partnerships and funding bids) could potentially develop. New methods and approaches may also contribute to the development of curricula/research methods amongst academic partners (particularly within design), development of engagement workshops amongst crime prevention partners, and development of new creative approaches amongst dramatic partners. In addition to uni-disciplinary impacts there will also be trans-disciplinary benefits linked to future collaboration within RJ, design and performance practices that are yet to be realised.

Finding new ways of deploying empathy - both engaging all classes of participants in RJ and in boosting the delivery of justice, crime reduction and community safety once the initial engagement has been secured - promises to realise and scale up the direct gains indicated by the systematic review of evaluative evidence quoted above. Beyond these gains, there are more speculative ones relating to how social cohesiveness can be supported by (and can support in its turn) a wider state of community safety and perception of fair and satisfying justice. Benefits and cost savings from processes of RJ are of interest to government, and in particular demand, to help mend 'Broken Britain'.

Whilst the real impact of using creative strategies to further the aims and objectives of RJ may take some time to payback in demonstrable ways, we will apply ongoing impact evaluation throughout the project to understand/evidence impact in regards to levels of connectivity and outcomes of engagement within the network. Surveys of network members will provide qualitative evaluation too.