In a secondary classroom in Belfast, pupils from a Controlled school and a Catholic maintained school are gathered around cameras and laptops. They have spent the previous day exploring examples of religious toleration in history and the present day: Rhode Island’s experiments with religious freedom in the seventeenth century; how the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement addressed religious diversity; how ballroom dancing classes in Jaffa brought together Israeli and Palestinian young people before the present conflict. They have also reflected on their own experiences of living in a city that can still feel segregated. Now they are producing short films –“Docutubes” – that connect these historical and contemporary examples with their everyday lives.

The Docutubes approach was developed as part of the European Commission Horizon 2020 funded project Religious Toleration and Peace (RETOPEA). In April 2026, academics from The Open University made the case to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS) that this creative approach can help address the challenge of educating young people about religious and non-religious diversity right now.

The changing policy landscape

How young people learn about religious and non-religious difference has implications not only for education policy, but for community relations, democratic participation and social cohesion.

Northern Ireland’s education system is undergoing significant scrutiny and reform. The 2023 Independent Review of Education recommended a new Religious Education (RE) syllabus that would help young people understand both the region’s increasing diversity and its Christian heritage. Alongside this, the recent draft Framework for Race Relations highlights the responsibility of schools to address racism - an obligation that surely includes teaching about religion in ways that do not marginalise minority groups.

The urgency of reform was underscored by the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in the ‘JR87’ case, which found that Northern Ireland’s Christianity focused RE and collective worship requirements were unlawful because they failed to be “objective, critical, or pluralistic”. As a result, the RE curriculum is now under extensive review.

An additional context for this is the high proportion of the population, 17.39%, which now identifies with “no religion” according to the 2021 Census. The situation is rapidly evolving. Now is a time when educators and policymakers are considering what – to borrow the language of the Supreme Court – teaching about religion in objective, critical and pluralistic ways looks like. How can policymakers ensure that young people are equipped with the skills to navigate a religiously diverse society?

What the RETOPEA approach offers

RETOPEA provides one practical answer. The project has developed innovative methods for teaching about religion, citizenship and history, centred on the collaborative creation of short documentary‑style films. The Docutube method encourages young people aged 12–18 to explore religious diversity, toleration and peace by engaging with historical sources, contemporary examples and their own lived experiences.

The process is creative and participatory. Working in groups, pupils analyse short source extracts for themselves, discussing their meaning together, and then produce films based on their own interpretations and ideas. The aim is not to produce polished films, rather the films are a means to an end, stimulating independent thought, critical engagement and dialogue. In doing so, the method also builds skills like teamwork, empathy, curiosity, and media literacy that extend far beyond RE.

Between 2020 and 2025, RETOPEA ran 20 workshops across Europe and in Jordan, funded by Horizon2020, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and The Open University’s Open Societal Challenges programme. These workshops were evaluated through participant observations, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were completed by 180 of 232 participants. The results were striking:

• 84% of questionnaire respondents agreed the workshop helped them think about religious peace and toleration in new ways.

• 96% of questionnaire respondents enjoyed the experience, indicating strong engagement and effective learning.

Three workshops took place in Northern Ireland, each in Belfast: the shared education workshop described above, and two involving each of the schools individually. Young people responded enthusiastically. They valued the chance to think about religious diversity, not only within Christianity but also more broadly (both in Northern Ireland and elsewhere); to question bias about religion in historical sources and social media; and to discuss controversial topics—including events during the 30 years of violent conflict that still impact their lives but are not always openly addressed at home or in school.

What this means for policy

At the Assembly’s Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series, The Open University team set out several recommendations for policymakers, drawing directly from the RETOPEA experience. These recommendations speak to the current moment of curriculum reform and the wider challenge of building a more cohesive society.

• Invest in high‑quality teaching on religious and non‑religious diversity

Young people want to learn about diverse traditions and experiences and teachers need support to do that well and inclusively.  Teacher training and good learning resources are  essential if schools are to deliver teaching that reflects Northern Ireland’s changing demographics and meets legal obligations around equality and inclusion.

• Embed creative, participatory approaches in both formal and informal education

Methods like Docutubes should be promoted not only within RE, but across the curriculum and in youth work, museums and community settings. Film‑making helps young people understand how information is produced, edited and shared. These media literacy skills can make them less vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation while strengthening teamwork and communication.

• Provide safe spaces for discussion

Young people want opportunities to talk openly about religious diversity, toleration and intolerance. RETOPEA workshops consistently showed that, when facilitated well, pupils engage respectfully and collaboratively—even when holding very different convictions. These kinds of spaces can help protect young people from sectarian and extremist influences.

• Adapt RE and History curricula to connect past and present

Teaching about religious diversity should not be limited to teaching facts to young people. Instead, young people should be encouraged to connect historical examples to contemporary issues and their own lived experiences. This does not mean learning simplistic ‘lessons’ from the past but rather learning with history as a tool for reflection.

Why this matters now

The current review of Northern Ireland’s RE curriculum will rightly want to consider knowledge content. However, the insight from the RETOPEA project is that alongside this, young people need to learn skills which build information literacy and give them the tools to evaluate information, understand different perspectives, make sense of a complex, diverse society and develop the kind of communication skills that equip them to engage respectfully with differing points of views. In a society still shaped by segregation and the legacy of conflict, creating spaces where young people can critically and respectfully engage with difference remains especially important.

At a pivotal moment for curriculum reform, policymakers have an opportunity to build an approach to RE that equips young people not only with knowledge, but with the critical, reflective and dialogic skills needed for life in a diverse society. The RETOPEA project has shown us that young people agree. To meet this moment, we should listen to them and trust them more.

By Dr John Maiden on behalf of the RETOPEA team.

John Maiden is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at The Open University. He is a historian of modern religion and a member of the RETOPEA team. To learn more about RETOPEA visit https://retopea.eu/s/start/page/home or the Open University’s free Docutubes Badged Open Course for teachers.