Reflective Citizens Koinonia Method
A charitable initiative of the Koinonia-Art School and Community, Reflective Citizens is a distinctive group-analytic method developed by Koinonia-Art over many years through shared creativity with colleagues from Serbia and other countries, together with citizens participating in the workshops.
Over time, it has grown into an extensive programme of community-based psychosocial workshops, open to everyone interested. The workshops take place in a wide variety of settings, in cities and villages, both in Serbia and abroad. In addition to Serbia and the wider region, the programme has flourished particularly in Italy, Greece and the United States.
Since 2020, regular online International Reflective Citizens workshops have brought together hosts from around twenty countries.
These workshops provide a supportive environment in which participants can speak freely about social and psychological issues concerning current events in their own and other societies, drawing on their different perspectives and roles as citizens.
Participants can reflect together on different views and experiences, explore the feelings that arise and talk about them. This opens up a space in which differences can gradually become part of a richer and more integrated experience and understanding of the social and psychological reality in which we live.
The opportunity for people to genuinely want to listen to one another and understand what others think and feel—even in areas where perspectives differ sharply and may give rise to hatred, arguments and disputes—creates an interest in developing and learning the skills of listening and dialogue. These skills offer an alternative to our frequent tendencies towards uniformity of thought, aggression, and civic isolation accompanied by feelings of hopelessness, despair and meaninglessness. These difficult feelings, too, can be spoken about, with the aim of sharing and understanding them.
Training for hosts of this method is also free of charge and readily accessible.
