A Transformative Approach

The default approach to conflict in our society is often punitive. It sees conflict as occurring between a perpetrator and a victim and seeks to identify who has done wrong and punish that person in order to prevent them from committing the same offence again. This system ends up oppressing many people and very rarely gets to the root cause of conflict.

Our work in XR UK is inspired by restorative and transformative approaches.

Restorative approaches attempt to move beyond the oppression of our current justice system by focusing on responding to conflict through healing or restoring the relationships and connections within and between people and communities to a healthy and positive state for all. We mainly use our preferred term of Transformative, which emphasises that a process is about creating positive change in relationships, conditions and systems. Rather than resolution meaning just going back to a situation where things were really not ok for some, it's about listening to what's not ok and co-creating a way forward that genuinely works for all.

“I believe in transformative justice - that rather than punishing people for surface-level behavior, or restoring conditions to where they were before the harm happened, we need to find the roots of the harm, together, and make the harm impossible in the future. I believe that the roots of most harm are systemic, and we must be willing to disrupt vicious systems that have been normalized. I believe that we are at the beginning of learning how to really practice transformative justice in this iteration of species and society. There is ancient practice, and there will need to be future practices we can't yet foresee. But I believe that with time it must become an incredible pleasure to be able to be honest, expect to be whole, and to know that we are in a community that will hold us accountable and change with us.” - adrienne maree brown