A workshop on conflict, not solving it, in Fort Kochi on Feb. 12

What happens when we stop trying to “fix” disagreements and start making something with it instead? In a world that keeps demanding we pick sides and reach consensus, the Conflictorium approach is refreshingly honest. Conflict is not something to be solved. It’s something to be understood, felt, and held.

My early memories of Conflict

I was twelve when I learned that disagreement had a price. My science teacher’s class had a real lesson, but it had nothing to do with science. If you disagreed with her, a piece of white chalk would fly across the room. If you disagreed a lot, it was the cloth duster. Sometimes if you are unlucky, the wooden one.

She had excellent aim. I was a good target, rarely ducking from the projectiles. A sitting duck?

There were points for taking her side. There were no points for asking why.

She never asked me, “Why do you see it differently?” She never asked anyone. You picked a side — preferably hers — and you shut up.

The thing about practice is, it works. You cook every day, in six months you’re a decent cook. You run every day, in six months you can finish 5K without stopping.

I’ve been avoiding conflict every day for decades now. And yes, I’ve become magnificent at it.

I can sense a disagreement forming three sentences before it arrives, the way some people can smell rain. I steer away smoothly. I nod. I say “that’s a good point.”

I swallow words that taste like chalk dust. Perhaps memories from the projectile chalk pieces from the “school of no conflicts”.

I got so good at it that I started paying for peace. Literally. A vendor overcharges? Fine. A partner takes more than their share? Let it go.

If you watched me, you’d think I was being completely irrational. This is not irrational. It is trained. Decades of training myself.

Then one evening, I came across a note about a workshop. Something about psychologically safe spaces — places where you could say “I see it differently” without a duster flying at your head. Places where the first question was not “which side are you on?” but “why do you think that way?”

That idea stayed with me for a long time.

Because each one of us has our own mind. Our own way of seeing things. And I’m starting to wonder — the most dangerous thing my teacher ever threw was not the chalk.

It was the silence she made me carry out of that classroom. And the conflict she did not let me share. I’m still carrying it.

On Feb. 12, 2026, Aishwarya Shrivastav from Conflictorium will lead a free, participatory workshop at the ABC Art Room in Fort Kochi. It’s called “Sensing, Difference, and Making Together”.

The workshop offers no neat conclusions and no group consensus. It is two hours of slowed-down attention, shared making, and staying with the discomfort of seeing things differently from the person next to you.

What Happens in the Workshop

Conflictorium shapes the session around its practice of sensing, listening, privilege, interpretation, and collective making. The idea is simple but powerful: meaning is not fixed. It shifts and breaks apart. That breaking is not a failure. It is where the interesting stuff begins.

Instead of smoothing over disagreement, the workshop treats tension, contradiction, and partial understanding as productive. The session ends with participants creating a collective “Patchwork of Differences.” Each person contributes fragments of their own expression — words, marks, gestures — and participants place these together without hierarchy or correction. The result is an open-ended assemblage: multiple ways of seeing, remembering, and making sense of conflict, all held together without anyone needing to agree.

Who Is Aishwarya Shrivastav?

Aishwarya is a writer, communications strategist, and facilitator who works at the intersection of storytelling, community, and public life. Her strength is creating spaces where people write and reflect without pressure or performance. She guides with a feminist, people-first approach. She focuses on lived experience, memory, and everyday language — not “perfect” writing. It is the kind of space where you can show up exactly as you are.

Did you know? Conflictorium, founded by Avni Sethi in 2013, is a participatory museum in Ahmedabad that won the prestigious Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice from New York’s Vera List Center. It has hosted over 450 events and welcomed 50,000+ visitors — all free. The museum now has locations in Ahmedabad and Raipur, Chhattisgarh. At the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025-26 schedule, Conflictorium is part of the Invitations programme — a platform that brings together independent, artist-run initiatives from around the world.

A note from the cat

As a cat, I see a world that keeps demanding humans to pick sides and reach consensus. The Conflictorium approach is a welcome change. Conflict is not something to be solved. It’s something to be understood, felt, and held. And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is sit in a room with strangers, acknowledge you see things differently, and make something together anyway.