How to establish a dialogue between the Church and society with the help of art?
On November 4-7, Saint Paul University in Ottawa (Canada) hosted the International Conference "Shall We Talk About Trust?" (Talk about trust?). Khrystyna Shabat, head of Child Dignity Center of UCU, became the speaker of the event.
The conference was organized by the Saint Paul University Center for Children and Vulnerable Adults. Khrystyna Shabat shared her experience of how to establish a dialogue between the Church and society with the help of art.
"To restore trust in the institution, we must communicate delicately and in an understandable language. What language is this? This is the absence of clericalism, a language without imposition, a language of dialogue. We have been looking for it for a long time, and we have found it - it is the language of art. For more than a year, we at the Center for the Dignity of the Child at UCU have been working on the International Art Project "SAFEGUARDING. Safety of the child in the environment of the church". It is called for a dialogue between the laity and spiritual persons and creates many bridges and encourages people to think about important things," said Khrystyna Shabat.
The project arose from the idea of cooperation between the countries of Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We share a common post-colonial and post-communist past with these countries. Therefore, together with child protection experts in the church from 6 countries, they created a course illustrated by icon painter Ulyana Krekhovets. The course is intended for clergy, consecrated persons and lay people and is available in Ukrainian, English, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian and Slovak languages. Ukraine is the leader of the project: https://www.ucu-edu.online/safeguarding/
Khrystyna Shabat explained how the sketches for the course formed the basis of the art installation: "Then, unexpectedly for all of us, a dialogue with society began. We held the first presentation of the course in the public gallery of Lviv. It was a combination of a lecture and an exhibition. We transferred sketches about the experience of violence onto t-shirts and created an imitation crowd from them. The idea is that we pass thousands of people every day. Each of them has their own experience, wounds, injuries. But we are always in such a hurry that we don't have time to stop and react. The task of each of us is to see people who need help and to help. More than 10,000 people visited the exhibition, we received hundreds of feedbacks and realized that this is our way to dialogue and restore trust with society."
Currently, the presentation of the course and the exhibition took place in Lviv, Kyiv and Warsaw. There are plans to visit each of the countries participating in the project and to go out into the world. The language of art is universal: it overcomes borders, promotes dialogue, helps raise difficult topics of violence against children, reminds everyone of the responsibility for the safety of children.