Academia meets the community in the workshop-seminar in Ibagué
Photo: Carolina Patiño. Universidad de Ibagué.
Universidad de Ibagué, an associate member of German-Colombian Institute for Peace – CAPAZ held a workshop-seminar called “Conflict, Communication and mental-health: experiences of practical work with victims and their recovery”.
The workshop was held on January 24, 2019 and it’s participants included students, researchers, and professors from a number of Colombian universities; representatives of social organisations and of victims, and members of the community in Ibagué and a number of municipalities in Tolima.
The first day also enjoyed the participation of experts from Universidad Externado de Colombia, Universidad del Rosario, Corporación Universitaria UniMinuto, and Universidad de Ibagué.
At least one hundred people attended the lecture by Anne-Marie Müller from the University of Freiburg Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, in Germany. Müller has broad-ranging experience in research into topics relating to trauma and memory from a mental health perspective.
Photo: Carolina Patiño, Universidad de Ibagué.
Empathic narrative methodologies
In the afternoon, 61 people took part in six roundtables including the different audiences at the event, among them, a number of victims. The groups approached the central issue with regards how to design more empathic narrative methodologies in the audio-visual production that can allow victims to externalise their pain and, by doing so, possibly overcome the psychological effects of their experience.
Eight questions derived from this central question, and these were then grouped into four axes. At the end, the rapporteurs for each table shared the most relevant aspects of the answers given. The listening and discussion methodology was well received as it generated an invaluable dialogue that contributed significantly to the project goals.
Another important achievement of the workshop was to have linked journalists who contributed reflections, from the perspective of their roles asaudio-visual producers, some of whom were victims of the armed conflict from the more remote areas of Ibagué.
The workshop-seminar shed light on the demands of the victims of the armed conflict in the Tolima region to approach topics such as communication, mental health and conflict, as well as their need to participate in such events and their continuity in the future.
The workshop was part of the project called: “Development of 4 of 12 exploratory phases, for the creation and design of the Tolima Centre for Audio-visual Memory for Peace”, supported by CAPAZ and coordinated by the main researcher Dr. Carolina Patiño Ospina, who also coordinated the workshop.