The 1998 National Gathering promised to be hard work for all. The legacy of those 8 sheltered years is an enthusiastic, growing, spreading movement in desperate search of some real order and structure, and some widely differing views about what we should be doing and how. We have had to put all our conflict resolution, and consensus-making skills into overdrive and prove that we can do for ourselves what we 'preach' to others. It felt as if it paid off, as if AVP had visited the osteopath and bones had been clicked back into place. On the ground too, wonderful things are happening.
Local groups have their own characteristic styles.
Its biggest advance at the moment is through the York Domestic Violence Forum. The police are carrying AVP leaflets to domestic violence incidents and the Forum and AVP York are setting up a conference to explore the breaking of the cycles of violence. In Manchester there is more emphasis on prison work, with an ongoing programme at Risley and a first workshop at Buckley Hall, Rochdale. Well, its impossible to sum up in a few crisp sentences - and I for one have stopped trying. The only way to find out and understand is to come on a workshop - but I don't expect anyone to accept that kind of blind selling either.