Through years of building organisations, community work, political organising and teaching about harm and abuse and preventing and responding to it, I’ve come to understand how we approach conflict as key to our ability to be, grow, work and build things together.

I’ve spent a long time thinking through what it takes to stay curious and useful when things get really tough. I know the pain of projects and possibilities collapsing through unmanaged conflict, harm, accusatory cycles, avoidance and fear. Cultures of disposability can take hold the in moments when we most need to move towards each other with curiosity. Since 2020 I’ve offered workshops in and around skills and tools for conflict, with the goal of helping groups get a more critical lens on how we discern the difference between disagreement, conflict, hurt, harm and even abuse, addressing unhelpful tendencies and finding alternatives with care, rigour and humour.

I now co-facilitate a lot of this work with the brilliant Sarj Lynch. Our sessions have supported groups and organisations to respond to each other with more care, clarity and proportion, with less avoidance, punishment or magical thinking about “perfect” behaviour. If you want help to dig into all this, visit our website Big Beef and Beyond.