Research:

Asian Futures
Is there a chance of a common Asian identity of the future? A Japanese view.

One Nation One People
How do we belong to nations? Immigrant identities in the UK & US across the generations.

Local Roots of Global Citizenship
How familial experience and generational change transform societies.

Campaign:

Iraq Cohesion: A media campaign helping to build cultural cohesion in Iraq.

‘We Are Free!’: A TV campaign encouraging conflict resolution in Ireland

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The OICD works to fulfil its mission through its Research Projects and Campaign Projects. Research projects attempt to reveal either the specific immediate, or long-term general, roots of ethnic/religious/national conflict. Campaign projects use this and other research to aid in the defusion of current, or prevention of future, violent and non-violent human conflict through the use of applied approaches such as media campaigning, therapies and education.

Research Projects
(currently spanning: Europe, East Asia, Africa, N. America)

OICD research focuses on Identity Mechanics, attempting to deepen the understanding that we have of how people form collective identities and how they change over time. As well as this more general remit, research projects can also be focused in order to meet specific needs of a proposed Campaign project. They can be directed at particular communities or groups with the explicit aim of understanding the configuration of the collective identity in question. Research projects address the following themes.

Campaign Projects
(currently proposed: N. Ireland, Nigeria, Iraq, South East Asia)

Campaign projects utilise the OICDs in-house expertise and experience in studying and observing identity formation and movement. They are frequently based on research projects intended to inform them directly or indirectly. Campaign projects address:

Commonly, the approach to building campaigns starts with identifying the sector of the society which is causing the most conflict. This differs from case to case and can on rare occasions affect all sectors. Once this is done, detailed in-house and external research works to inform the project on the historical concerns of the target sector/s, their relationships to cultural others, and their core “narratives” of collective existence.

In building up a campaign, sectors free from conflict (often, but not always younger and more affluent generations) act as examples of where the problem sectors can channel existing cultural history and tradition into diversity-acknowledging collectives. These are then ‘mirrored’ and their core messages celebrated in advertising that can be applied across a wide variety of media. Non-problem sectors are encouraged to infiltrate and influence problem sectors.

Campaigns utilise three main social factors in forming emotionally rich media campaigns:

OICD teams are able to recognise and position sectors of society in relation to one another in order to legitimise peaceful, and de-legitimise militant, sectors through the playing out of key identification points in the public domain. From this expertise the campaigns follow a common 6-stage approach:

1. Identify and verify ‘problem’ and ‘healthy’ sectors and their relationship
2. Map common historical identifiers and narratives
3. Assemble the key common narratives that express diversity as unity
4. Build campaign which celebrates collective identity and promotes solidarity through diversity
5. Test campaign with focus groups to assess effectiveness and modify accordingly
6. Disseminate/Broadcast and Evaluate (ongoing)

All these efforts combine to “display” cultural and national narratives which can be picked up and used by the local citizen, empowering people to take on a diversity-encompassing and valued sense of their own cultural history and national (or other) membership.

Campaign projects often come up with recommendations for community development projects that will aid the defusion of conflict in the problem sectors of the target society.

The Organisation for Intra-Cultural Development (OICD)