{"id":1398,"date":"2022-09-29T13:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1398"},"modified":"2022-09-29T13:00:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T13:00:09","slug":"religious-toleration-and-peace-reflections-on-the-retopea-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1398","title":{"rendered":"Religious Toleration and Peace: Reflections on the RETOPEA project"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Maiden<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier this month members of the OU\u2019s RS department, John Wolffe, Stefanie Sinclair and John Maiden attended the \u2018final\u2019 (I use inverted commas, because we hope it is just the start!), of the EU-funded Religious Toleration and Peace<\/a> (RETOPEA) project. The conference was held in Ohrid, North Macedonia, a country which has a unique recent history of religious toleration and State-building \u2013 although its context of two major populations of Orthodox and Muslim citizens, a fairly recent, albeit brief, violent conflict, and sustained grassroots and State efforts to negotiate ethnic and religious differences, means some parallels can be drawn with the religious and political situation in Northern Ireland. The purpose of RETOPEA has been to promote religious and convictional toleration amongst European young people \u2013 including North Macedonia youth \u2013 and to work with them, as well as policy makers, religious leaders, and civil society actors to propose approaches of \u2018learning with history\u2019 to address present-day issues of lived religious diversity.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Ohrid\u2019s long history of religious diversity: a 4th century Christian basilica<\/p><\/div>\n

The OU team was in Ohrid primarily to reflect on the experience of using filmmaking to enable young people to think about religious diversity in history and the present. In the past four years we have engaged with schools and other educational contexts in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Spain, North Macedonia, and Poland. The films, which we call Docutubes, are made by young people, based on their own experiences and inspired also by over 400 texts, pictures, and films about religious diversity available on the RETOPEA website. Some of the amazing films the young people have made\u00a0are now online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What are some of the main reflections we had on our experiences of working with young people? I select here a few:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Preparing for the RETOPEA conference \u2013 G20 style\u2026<\/p><\/div>\n

– That young people and teachers need to be given the opportunity to engage with historic counter-narratives of religious toleration \u2013 of examples in history of religious tolerance and coexistence. Too often, young people, through the influence of educational textbooks, the classroom, and in the popular media they encounter, think of the past only in terms of prejudice and intolerance.<\/p>\n

– That \u2018safe spaces\u2019, like the contexts we created in order to make Docutubes, can allow young people to have very constructive discussions about potentially controversial issues. The young people with which we worked were more than able to engage with each other about these matters.<\/p>\n

– That creative \u2018deep learning\u2019 approaches, like Docutubes, can help bridge the gap between past and present for young people \u2013 and, furthermore, prompt them to think \u2018outside the box\u2019 about issues of religious diversity now.<\/p>\n

Teachers and youth workers who would like to run workshops themselves can also now take a FREE Badged Open Course through The Open University, \u2018Young people and religion: creative learning with history\u2019<\/a>. If you want to find out more about Docutubes you can also contact the OU\u2019s RETOPEA team directly at retopea@open.ac.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Maiden Earlier this month members of the OU\u2019s RS department, John Wolffe, Stefanie Sinclair and John Maiden attended the \u2018final\u2019 (I use inverted commas, because we hope it is just the start!), of the EU-funded Religious Toleration and Peace (RETOPEA) project. The conference was held in Ohrid, North Macedonia, a country which has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,51,31],"tags":[495,496],"class_list":["post-1398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-and-conferences","category-contemporary-religion-in-historical-perspective-2","category-religious-literacy","tag-retopea","tag-toleration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}