Maria Arpa

Stories Seldom Told

Maria Arpa is the founder of the Centre for Peaceful Solutions and the executive director at The Centre for Non-Violent Communication. She has dedicated the last 20 years of her life promoting non-violent communication as an alternative to mainstream systems of domination culture. Through her career, Maria has worked in some of the most violent areas of the UK and the USA, including with families, in schools and workplaces, within neighbourhoods and in prisons.

"I think it's true for everyone who was around in the 60s and 70s, and even into the 80s. That there were cultural jokes. There were jokes around particular groups of people, or particular races, or particular colours, or particular religions. And we thought nothing of telling those jokes. In fact, it was a way of bonding with, in inverted commas, "like minded people". That we could pick on a race or a culture or an affliction, or a personality trait or something. You could pick on something. And you could make jokes about it over and over and over and over again. And the level to which that reinforces something."