Pinging Tea: A Self-Mediation Peace & Justice Fishbowl Experiment from The Werner Institute on Vimeo.

PingingTea℠ is a self-mediation modality of Alternative Dispute Resolution. It is offered gratis by a host, as an experimental fishbowl conflict resolution community event. It is an innovative and fun improv theatre exercise to conduct self-mediation. It helps participants resolve interpersonal problems, and otherwise improve relationships in a safe, friendly and supportive venue. PingingTea℠ was created as an alternative to formal mediation to solve petty slights, misunderstandings, improve relationships and to create innovative opportunities for communicating 1:1, privately, yet, in fishbowl format in front of an audience. A relational aesthetics rendition, PingingTea℠ is a social experiment and a populist movement, an effort in distribute justice.

After a venue is identified, Actor-Participants volunteer to approach the stage where they sit at small tables across their Conversation Partner while drinking tea and engaging in conversation for a half-hour. Depending on the setting, there can be as many as ten to twenty dyads participating onstage. As Actor-Participants move successfully toward resolution they tap or ping the hot glass of tea to signal positive movement towards resolution. The Audience watches for non-verbal cues in meditative mode. After the self-mediation, the Audience can debrief the Actor-Participants and their Conversation Partners on process matters. Pre-registration by Actor-Participants and their Conversation Partners is encouraged as they can be briefed on listening techniques and approaches to make their self-mediation successful.

Presenter Bio:

Conchita F. Serri is the Creator and Convener of PingingTea℠ - an experimental peacemaking tool and artistic social practices performance art show and clinic involving self-selected Actor-participants. She is a peacemaker, mediator, Ombuds, cultural creative, social entrepreneur and performance artist interested in the phenomenological aspects of the psychology of conflict, especially during the processes of mediation and self-mediation. Her focus is on the interactive and transformative dialectic of conflict processing and Carl Rogers’ maxim that the locus of the problem is often not based around what actually took place but, instead, it is based around the perceptions, interpretations and feelings of the parties in conflict. She is the Ombuds at Pomona College and has an online ombuds consultancy.

Conchita earned a Master’s degree from Harvard University and a law degree from Boston College Law School. She co-authored Notable Latino Americans: A Biographical Dictionary, Greenwood Press 1997, a CHOICE awardee as Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. She is also the author of the peer-reviewed article: Self-compassion and the Dynamics of Investigating Sexual Harassment, Focus on Business Practices: Emotions at Work, A publication of the Association for Business Communications, Business Practices Committee, Sage Publications, December 2006.