Peace Sofas

Extremism had risen fast across Europe. Social media and fake news had polarized communities. As Lukáš Zorád of Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia put it, people don't listen to each other anymore.

He pointed to the deadly attack on Henry John Serafica Acorda, a Filipino immigrant, as the kind of hate and mistrust the work was meant to change. Talking about tolerance wasn't enough. People had to actually sit down together.

The European Network for Non-violence and Dialogue, led by PDCS and co-funded by the European Union, came to us with that problem. It needed a way to get people with opposing views talking again, and a way to make the rest of Europe notice.

We paired people with opposing views on refugees, feminism, abortion and homelessness. Then we cut each pair's own living-room sofas in half and sewed the halves together into one. The pairs were real people with real convictions, not actors.

A sofa is where people feel safe, at home rather than on a debate stage. Christian Strasser, director of the MuseumsQuartier Wien, called it a perfect symbol. On a shared sofa, you're a host and a guest, not an opponent.

We filmed each pair meeting on their merged sofa for the first time: a refugee from Iran and a student worried about migration, a feminist and a conservative Christian, a man who had lived without a home for 22 years and a dancer. Each conversation was recorded and built into its sofa.

With PDCS and the MuseumsQuartier, the four sofas went on show around MQ Wien from June 21 to 27, 2018. Visitors could sit down on them and listen to the conversations that had happened there.

The film launched the day before, translated into five languages, with a press event at MQ and media outreach in six countries. The PR agency SEESAME coordinated agencies across the region and localized the release for each market.

Afterwards the sofas were offered for sale, with the proceeds going to the network's work against polarization in central and eastern Europe. Each one still carried the conversation that had happened on it.

The film ended on one line: when we talk with people who see things differently, we both see better. Then it asked everyone to pledge a conversation with someone whose point of view is not their own.

By July 11, 2018, three weeks in, 8,705 people had signed the pledge and the film had 60,877 views on YouTube. Media coverage reached a combined audience of 21.8 million.

The 39 stories ran in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania, in outlets from Der Standard and the Kronen Zeitung to ORF. Most of it ran in local languages, close to where the polarization was happening.