Coventry RJ Forum ran a Conference on 12 November.

Making of a Film

Delegates agreed that, in order to promote RJ among the wider public, the Forum will organise the making of a film about RJ and show it to communities, schools etc during RJ week 2020. Barbara Tudor has lots of films which might be useful.

Philip Brown pointed out that Finham Park School had already produced a film about RJ works in a school, but nevertheless delegates were keen to produce their own film.

Clifford Grimason sometimes shows clips of films in which the traditional good-guy resolves a problem by talking to the bad guy instead of killing him. When showing a film to children you need to ask them to think about how both parties are feeling at different moments.

Sainsburys is currently showing an advertisement Nicholas the Sweep which has elements of RJ.

We would need to engage with City of Culture.

Coventry University media department could help to make the film as part of the Advantage programme.

Philip suggested the film could show the progress of Coventry from the blitz, the feeling of hatred for the Germans, the message of forgiveness from Provost Howard and the antagonistic response to him, the creation of the first twinned cities, the establishment of the Lord Mayor’s Committee and Coventry’s adoption of the City of Peace and Reconciliation strapline, the establishment of RJ by Barbara Tudor and the several schools, how RJ works and how successful it is, the withering of these projects, and the conclusion that we someone in power to drive RJ within the city.

Other ideas discussed

To help people obtain RJ, something similar to the Samaritans telephone service would be useful.
It would be good if local people could deal with conflict rather than sending a problem off to a remote organisation.
For an RJ service to be sustainable requires political will and cross-party consensus.
Somebody with influence has to drive an RJ service, otherwise it will not be sustainable.
RJ must be shown to be cost-effective in order to raise finance.
University law or criminology societies might have RJ groups although sustainability could be a problem.