Programs · A past offering
The Online Global NVC Festivals
For three seasons during a time the whole world was apart, we gathered online to learn, grieve, and practice Nonviolent Communication together. This is the story of what we made.
Programs · A past offering
For three seasons during a time the whole world was apart, we gathered online to learn, grieve, and practice Nonviolent Communication together. This is the story of what we made.
Between 2020 and 2021, NVC Rising hosted three Online Global NVC Festivals. They gathered new and old friends to dive deep into the learning of Nonviolent Communication, with a variety of trainers from around the globe, and to keep building an inclusive learning community for mutual support, at a moment when so many of us could not be in the same room.
We are no longer running these festivals. But they were a beautiful chapter, and we love that people still want to see what we built together. What follows is a look back.
Looking back
The three festivals
Born in the first weeks of lockdown, our first festival gathered teachers and learners from every continent for live workshops on empathy, conflict, healing, and connection in challenging times.
The second festival grew an Activism Hub, with empathy dinners, restorative responses to harm, and sessions on how NVC meets systems, inclusion, and the work of social change.
The third and final festival centred on Working Through Polarization: staying authentic and connected to our own needs in the presence of people who see the world very differently than us.
How they felt
Sessions ran from gentle introductions to advanced "train the trainer" spaces, and were timed so that, wherever you were on the map, something was always within reach. Most workshops were recorded and stayed available for a year afterward.
Around the live sessions there were intimate practice circles for deep connection, a round-the-clock Empathy Café, and themed sharing circles, spaces to be met, not just to listen.
What we gathered around
The teachers
More than fifty certified NVC trainers gave their time across the three festivals. A few of the faces who taught with us:
…and many more, from Kenya to Japan, Colombia to Germany, Sri Lanka to Brazil.
"I am very grateful for this opportunity that brought me learning, shifts, expanded consciousness and most of all, the chance to experience how the world can be. There's hope for us."
What they sparked
The global gatherings inspired regional NVC communities to host festivals of their own, in their own language and rhythm.
Held entirely in Japanese, these online festivals brought together international and Japanese trainers for dozens of hours of NVC workshops. The first drew over 700 participants; the 2022 edition, Reclaiming Connections, ran across three full days with sessions recorded for a year afterward.
The GFK Online-Festival gathered the German-speaking NVC community for three days of workshops with over thirty trainers, under the banner #GemeinsamWirksam: together, effective, moving into action.
What they left behind
A share of every festival went straight to grassroots NVC work around the world. In the first year alone, ten grants reached local projects, with initiatives supported in places like Kenya, Uganda, and China.
That spirit of giving back lives on in our grants programme today.
If you attended one of the festivals, the recordings are still yours. Look them up in the Global Festivals Library.
Visit the Festivals Library →