The Conciliation Project

The NEA ESP National Conference is proud to partner with The Conciliation Project for the first of two special conference presentations, to courageously spotlight important historical events through the use of social justice theater.

The National Education Association’s vision for safe, just, and equitable schools is of thriving spaces that are safe and welcoming for all students, discriminatory toward none, integrate the social, emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual needs of the whole student, and equitably and fully-fund the community school model with wraparound services and resources. NEA’s vision is to emphasize evidence-based behavioral practices centered in the philosophy of restorative justice over the criminalization and policing of students, and which dismantle and eliminate inequitable policies, practices, and systems that deprive many of our students of their futures and disproportionately harm Native, Asian, Black, Latin(o/a/x), Middle Eastern and North African, Pacific Islander, and Multiracial students, including those who identify as LGBTQ+, have disabilities, and/or are English language learners.

View page 31 of NEA’s 2022-2023 Policy Statement to learn more about NEA’s vision for Safe, Just and Equitable Schools.

The Conciliation Project (TCP) has an 11-year history of facilitating difficult conversations around race and racism through the use of theatre. As Richmond, Virginia's social justice theatre company, TCP partners with organizations and communities to engage in the long process of healing our nation’s historic past.

The Conciliation Project exists with its own history, pulling from energy developed in Seattle, Washington in 2001. Often described as the reconciliation project, TCP members and founder Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates are quick to point out that something must first be “conciled” in order to be “reconciled.”

In considering our nation’s racial history and the former clearly never having been achieved we are left with the concept of conciliation.

The Conciliation Project is dedicated and committed as a company and as individual members to courageously embrace our nation’s past in order to build a future together that dreams of the immeasurable possibility of what true and uncompromised CONCILIATION would add to the quality of ALL of our lives.

We acknowledge the enormous capacity we have as people, citizens and artists to transform lives through a common-unity of purpose.