Why Peace & Conflict Skills Matter in Everyday UK Life

Frazer Macdonald Hay
Dec 3, 2025
3 min read

For most of my working life, I have operated at the intersection of people, place, memory, and conflict. I have worked in cities rebuilding after war; in neighbourhoods negotiating tense identities; in institutions grappling with histories they found difficult to acknowledge; and in communities looking for ways to reconnect after years of silence or division.

Through all of this, one insight has stayed with me:

Conflict does not begin with violence, and peace does not begin with treaties.They begin in everyday places, organisations, and encounters.

From planning meetings to workplace cultures, community consultations to neighbourhood disputes, the challenges we face in the UK today, polarisation, mistrust, isolation, and social fragmentation, are fundamentally peace and conflict challenges. They are human challenges. And they require approaches that combine psychology, listening, design, memory, mediation, and careful attention to the environments we share.

Why It Matters Now

The UK is quietly experiencing many of the same pressures I have seen in post-conflict and transitional contexts:

•Deepening polarisation

•Loss of trust in public institutions

•Community division around identity, migration, and space

•Disputes about land, planning, housing, and the past

•Loneliness, isolation, and social disconnection

•Anxiety and deteriorating workplace cohesion

These are not abstract issues; they affect local decision-making, project delivery, staff wellbeing, regeneration outcomes, and community resilience.

What organisations often lack is not technical competence, but conflict literacy, the ability to understand the emotional, cultural, and spatial dynamics that shape how people respond to change.

This is where peace and conflict expertise has real, practical value.

My background bridges Peace & Conflict Studies, architecture, human geography, mediation, international relations, education, and writing, and I bring a trauma-informed, participatory approach to all work.

What I Do:

I work with organisations, communities, and institutions to:

1. Build Social Cohesion & Manage Tension

Conflict awareness training

Facilitated dialogue

Mediation and conflict resolution

Cultural intelligence and difficult conversations

2. Support Peace-Positive Planning, Design, and Architecture

Conflict-sensitive community engagement

Trauma-informed analysis of public space

Adaptive re-use strategies grounded in social memory

Stakeholder mapping for complex regeneration projects

3. Build Capacity Through Training & Education

Workshops for councils, HR teams, architecture practices, universities

Curriculum and programme design

Youth-focused cohesion and identity workshops

Public lectures and seminars

4. Research, Writing & Analysis

Policy analysis

Community impact reports

Memory mapping and qualitative research

Writing and editorial work

What You Can Expect

•Calm, grounded presence

•Clear, accessible communication

•Insight drawn from global experience

•Conflict-sensitive, trauma-aware methods

•Practical recommendations you can implement

•A collaborative partner committed to positive outcomes

If you’re facing challenges around cohesion, communication, memory, identity, planning, or organisational culture, I’d be glad to talk.

Who I Work With

I collaborate with:

•Local authorities

•HR departments and businesses

•Architecture and planning practices

•NGOs and foundations

•Heritage and cultural institutions

•Education providers and universities

•Community groups and social enterprises

Whether the task is resolving tension in a workplace, designing a community engagement process, interpreting a difficult heritage site, or supporting a complex regeneration project, the approach is always the same:

respect, listening, and careful attention to people and place.

My Approach

Active Listening & Empathy

Careful listening is a skill, and it changes the outcome of any process. I work slowly, attentively, and with sensitivity to trauma and memory.

Interdisciplinary Insight

I combine peacebuilding methods with architectural understanding, cultural analysis, and practical field experience.

Participatory & Collaborative

I help people feel safe enough to articulate concerns, hopes, and histories that are often left unsaid.

Attention to Place

Buildings, streets, and public spaces carry memory

They shape behaviour, identity, and conflict.

I bring spatial analysis directly into dialogue,