Religious violence is as old as religion itself. Christians grow up reading about the enslavements of the Israelites by the Egyptians, Muslims about the wars fought by Muhammad against the Meccans. Today it continues to be one of, if not the, greatest cause of conflict around the world.

From a vantage in the UK, it would be tempting to think that religious sectarianism is waning. After all, last week saw the completion of devolution in Northern Ireland, with the devolution of policing and justice powers from the British Parliament at Westminster to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Completing that process required the two parties which had once exemplified the divisions in Northern Ireland - Protestant/Unionist DUP; Catholic/Republican Sinn Fein - to reach agreement.  

But their agreement came too late for Tomás Mac Giolla, the Republican politician who, as leader of Sinn Fein in the 1960s, had first tried to break the party's links to paramilitary violence. He died on 4 February 2010, a day before the DUP and Sinn Fein reached that agreement.

In the late 1950s, Mac Giolla had been interned and then imprisoned by the Irish Government, but his response was to seek to turn his party into a conventional political force, opposing the policy of abstaining from holding elected offices, and working with the leadership of the IRA to end the use of violence.  

Ultimately, he failed: both Sinn Fein and the IRA fractured, with the Provisional IRA continuing and escalating a campaign of violence. Paying tribute to him, Eamon Gilmore, the leader of the Irish Labour Party said, "Had more people listened to him in the late 1960s, 30 years of violence, and more than 3,000 deaths, might have been averted."

But an observer in Nigeria might well look at such statements and wonder at the minimal violence which accompanies sectarian conflict in the UK. After all, the same week in which Northern Ireland's devolution was formally completed saw bloody killings in Central Nigeria.

Christian villages near the town of Jos were the scene of a massacre, which locals blamed on Muslim herders. Official figures put the dead - including many children - at over 100, but that figure had risen from 50 just a few days before, and the Nigerian Red Cross told the New York Times that 332 bodies had been buried in one mass grave alone.

One survivor, Pepe, from the village of Dogo Na Hawa, told the BBC what he saw: "I went to my neighbour's house. I saw all the wives – they killed them, cut their bodies, put fire on them. And the babies. They killed all the children."

It seems likely that this attack was reprisal for a previous massacre of Muslim residents of the town of Kuru Karama, 30 kilometers south of Jos. On January 19th, men armed with machetes and guns attacked the town and killed at least 150 people. It was an appalling event, but in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake it went largely unnoticed in the Western media.

This part of Nigeria, and indeed the city of Jos itself, is no stranger to sectarian violence, with previous mass killings in 2001, 2004, and 2008 leaving hundreds dead on each occasion. The sectarian conflict is not confined to this region: across Nigera, Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 13,500 people have been killed in similar attacks and clashes since 1999.

The causes of the violence in Nigeria are partly religious, but as in Northern Ireland in the 1960s they are also partly political. Much of the tension between communities stems from discrimination against those considered "non-indigenes" - people who are either not descended from, or unable to trace descent from, the so-called "original inhabitants" of particular areas.

Nigerian security forces arrested several hundred people following last weeks massacre, charging around 50. It seems unlikely this will do anything to prevent further violence.

If I Wouldn't Be Me I Would Be You by Harrell Fletcher is a video documenting the scars that people have acquired over the years with the accompanying stories of how they were picked up. The video itself, although very simply produced, makes for intriguing viewing due to the very human nature of the content.

Fletcher's work Humans at War is the basis for FACT's Media Lounge activities during the MyWar exhibition. Using the same storytelling premise, people are invited to come and record their experiences of war and what war means to them, while others are asked to reimagine the audio story by drawing it out on paper.

Following the publication of a 'Photoshopped' image of a failed missile test by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an Internet meme developed with scores of alternative images created reimagining the incidient in a multitude of ways.

In Versions, exhibited in the upcoming MyWar exhibition at FACT, Oliver Laric takes some of the meme images and employs an airbrush artist to reproduce them. By airbrush, in its digital version one of the most typical and recognisable Photoshop tools, the images become alternate versions of the meme altogether.

This video on Laric's website provides a fascinating contextualisation of the piece, referencing other aspects and events relevant to the piece such as Zinedine Zidane's headbutt on Marco Materazzi and the prevelance of 'cammed' versions of movie's released on the Internet. Please be aware that the video does contain some explicit images.

Designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby have provided one of the exhibits for the MyWar exhibition. The Huggable Atomic Mushroom Cloud is a soft and cuddly version of a deadly war weapon, which provides a means for people of coping with irrational fears.

In this interview Dunne and Raby discuss critical design and its place in today's world.

The FACT delegation to Vancouver has returned home after a successful trip working with the W2 Community Arts Centre in the Downtown Eastside area of the city, including an interview with the BBC.

tenantspin Producer Ed Pink and Young People's Coordinator Louise Latter were involved in producing videos and using social media to highlight some of the problems that are facing the poorest residents of Vancouver.

I wouldn’t consider myself part of a community with regard to how and where I live, I suppose the closest community I have ever experienced is school, as a student at University or the arts community that I work and socialise with in Liverpool.

Even though I wouldn’t be classed as a member of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) community, I would say that I have felt part of something special since we came here and when I contribute to an event or a protest I become part of the community.

In my work community is a word that is thrown around all over the place, what I’m interested in, is how we engage people who live in Liverpool. Real engagement isn’t something that can happen quickly, it is something that should be long term with clear aims and objectives. Within Freehand (FACT’s young people’s programme) we should be constantly assessing what people really gain from our work and how they move on from it. We engage with large numbers and this is what the funders want, but is what we are doing really sustainable and valuable?

I’m learning how important it is to collaborate. I have always been quite scared of these external relationships. But, in fact, people are interested and are genuine in their collaborations. What I’ve found in DTES, Vancouver, over these last few days is that organisations here are really open and very able to create real collaborations with other partners and the participants they work with.

I met the staff and young women of Dreamseeds today and they have a great studio just outside of the DTES area. This programme is for young women aged 16 to 23, they work with staff to mould the programme and they participate in art practices that go across the board.

Dreamseeds is part of a larger young people’s project called Purple Thistle. This is a youth arts programme run by a collective of young people. Ed Pink (tenanspin Producer) and I attended their art showcase and we were really impressed. The group have their own studio, their own attitude and their own confidence. There were many different installations including a short film shown inside a tent produced by a young woman from Dreamseeds. Her film was about homelessness and young people. She had photographed them from the legs down and where they slept, shot all in black and white. She quoted a young homeless person as having said that he slept, “Wherever my feet take me...”

Another film made by a Dreamseeder was shot as if through the eyes of someone roaming the streets. It echoed themes of being lost in your own locality, not quite feeling you belong or feeling that you don’t know where to move on to. Both of these films were a part of a project called ‘Finding home’. Home is a big issue for these young people-some because of their past, some because they feel strongly about the housing problems in DTES. One of the young women told me she found the project hard to do because her housing had not always been stable and concentrating on this issue in a creative context wasn’t enjoyable or helpful for her. Maybe expressing these issues within a youth art programme isn’t always that helpful...

The event also included bands, photography and graffiti. I was impressed at how confident the young people were and how they took control of this event and led it in a way that was not forced or pretentious. I believe a huge part of this is due to the young people having their own space to create art work and being able to choose whatever theme, whatever art practice and whatever time they like. They are swamped by possibility and control.

Ed and I also visited Granville Island, which has a whole host of shops and entertainment. This is where we experienced the best Cultural Olympiad art works so far. Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller have recreated a small, old fashioned cinema within the University of Art and Design. Sit on a chair and put headphones on; beneath you on a small screen plays a black and white film. You hear the people speaking in the film but what is much more unnerving is the sounds and voices you hear ‘in the auditorium’. People burst out laughing, whisper to each other, cough and I even found myself shuffling out of the way when someone asked if they can get past-there is no one there and you find yourself embarrassed, confused and a little bit scared! Your mind has a hard time understanding what is really happening and what is not...

This superb video was created by Jamie Bell as part of an AS Level art course. He uses a flipbook with biro drawings to tell 'A Brief History of Almosty Everything'. The piece is apparently about 2100 pages long over about 50 excercise books.

You'll be glad to know he got full marks..!