RE Council Member, British Association of the Study of Religions, wishes to share the Religious Toleration and Peace (RETOPEA) Education Policy Event in Westminster.
How does an interdisciplinary approach which uses history and filmmaking help develop critical thinking about religious diversity, toleration and peace in the past and present? Policy makers, researchers, teachers and NGOs are invited to attend the Religious Toleration and Peace (RETOPEA) Education Policy Event in Westminster. This event is organised by The Open University and will take place on the 25th of January 2024 – 14:00 – 16:45 in The Council Room at One Great George Street, London SW1P 3AA. To book email retopea@open.ac.uk
The Religious Studies team at the Open University has developed an exciting new methodology to engage young people between the ages of 13 and 18 with issues of religious diversity, toleration and peace. This involves young people making short documentary-style films (‘docutubes’), drawing both on historical exemplars and on their own experience. This methodology has been developed and piloted across Europe, including the UK, as part of the international RETOPEA project (2018-22) funded by the European Commission’s Horizon2020 programme. More recently, through funding from Culham St. Gabriel’s and the Open University’s Open Societal Challenges programme, the docutube method has been further piloted in England and Northern Ireland, and in the Muslim majority countries of Albania and Jordan.
This short film introduces the project: https://vimeo.com/610672036 (Password: ‘Tolerance’)
Project findings indicate that the docutube method can enable young people to move beyond generalisations and stereotypes about religious diversity, make constructive and critical connections between the past, present and their own experiences, and think ‘outside of the box’ about religious toleration and peace.
The RETOPEA team has developed a number of freely available innovative educational resources for teachers and youth workers. This includes a collection of “clippings”, i. e. an online corpus of over 400 accessible curated sources that can be used as teaching materials. These are short texts, images and videos that explore different ways in which religious diversity is thought of in different environments and how religious peace treaties have been established in the past. The Open University also offers a free online course ( ‘Young people and religion: creative learning with history’ ), which explains how teachers and youth workers can use the RETOPEA clippings collection and docutube method in their own teaching. The material is appropriate for Religious Education, History, Philosophy, Ethics and for citizenship education in both formal and informal educational settings.
The objective of the RETOPEA Westminster Religious Toleration and Peace event on the 25th of January 2024 is to identify strategies to promote the wider adoption of the docutube method in schools and youth work, with a view to enhance young people’s religious and historical literacy and support peace and reconciliation.
If you are interested in attending this event, please contact: retopea@open.ac.uk
For further information about the docutube method and a free online course for teachers and youth workers, please see: Contemporary religion in historical perspective (open.ac.uk) and ‘Young people and religion: creative learning with history’.