Dr John Maiden, Prof Stefanie Sinclair, Dr Katelin Teller & Prof John Wolffe, The Open University
This presentation is relevant to Assembly discussion addressing the following matters: (1) the forthcoming Race Equality Bill and the related consultation findings reporting young people’s suggestion to widen curriculum on racism and diversity, including the scope of Religious Education (RE); (2) the forthcoming Education and Training Bill concerning 16-18s, which is to implement some of the 2023 Independent Review of Education recommendations, such as a new RE syllabus to help young people understand the society in which they are growing up, for example, both society’s increasing diversity and its Christian traditions; (3) the November 2025 Supreme Court finding that the current RE and collective worship provided in a school in Northern Ireland is contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Kingdom Human Rights Act 1998; (4) the ongoing development of England’s first national RE curriculum, which offers a comparative perspective in this area; and, (5) the draft Framework for Race Relations which emphasises the importance of education and training to reflect diversity.
Reporting on academic research conducted for the RETOPEA (Religious Toleration and Peace) Project, funded by EU Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement no. 770309), the Culham St. Gabriels Trust in the United Kingdom and The Open University’s Open Societal Challenges Programme, the presentation provides an innovative educational method for enhancing young people’s appreciation of religious, ethnic and cultural diversity. It outlines the method: how it involves young people working in teams to make short films – ‘docutubes’ – relating their own experience and observation through texts and images which reflect on religious toleration and peace in the past and present; and also affords young people the opportunity to develop skills in team-working, management of disagreement, communication and media literacy, which are valuable to young people in formal education, training or the workplace.
The presentation explains how the method has been trialled successfully through pilot workshops held in Northern Ireland, other parts of the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Jordan. It involved more than 200 young people ranging in age from 12 to the early 20s (including in a shared education context in North Belfast), to evidence the positive impacts on participants, as documented in their feedback and in observations made by teachers, leaders and the academics conducting the workshops. It also shows how the method was particularly effective with the 16-18 age group.
For a short video introducing the Project, view here; for an animation briefly explaining the docutube-making process, see here.
Date of Seminar: 22 April 2026
Policy Briefing
Presentation