In November and December 2024 and January 2025, over 460 community leaders across seven districts in Sri Lanka joined a series of 15 regional workshops conducted by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka (MMCA Sri Lanka). Organised in partnership with the Supporting Effective Dispute Resolution (SEDR) project, which is funded by the European Union (EU), these workshops engaged participants from Mannar, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Ampara, Monaragala, Jaffna, and Badulla.
The workshops aimed to enhance awareness of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms and equip community leaders, educators, and youth with tools to navigate disputes and conflicts related to land in Sri Lanka. By incorporating arts-based methodologies, the workshops encouraged participants to explore new pathways for understanding, empathy, and solidarity.
The workshops, which were held in Tamil and Sinhala were conducted by Kalyani Sundaralingam, Thamilini Siththiravadivel, and Bavaneedha Loganathan. These facilitators were part of the Dialogue and Civic Engagement Fellowship program, set up by the MMCA Sri Lanka in partnership with the SEDR project. Amalini De Sayrah, Project Manager at the MMCA Sri Lanka, said, “Our three Fellows are arts and cultural practitioners with experience in using creative expression to explore difficult stories. We brought them on because we were excited to see how their experience would support the work this Fellowship is meant to do, and we were thrilled to see the resulting enthusiasm from the community.”
The Fellows created three distinct workshop models which guided participants through reflective and practical exercises. The workshops included sessions which highlighted the distinction between debate and dialogue in dispute resolution and explored the dynamics of entrenched conflicts, along with sessions where the participants designed and practised generative questions which are key to facilitating meaningful conversations. The most anticipated session in each workshop involved specially commissioned artworks from the first rotation of the MMCA Sri Lanka’s ongoing exhibition ‘Total Landscaping’.
