Episode 10 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where our icebreaker ship explores conflict icebergs as a model: what it highlights, and what it hides.

'All models are wrong, but some are useful' - George Box

Show notes, links

The perenially-useful Seeds for Change have a PDF on navigating conflict in groups.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Sami: So welcome everybody to the Resist + Renew short podcast where we chat about facilitation tools, why we love them, and simultaneously, why we hate them. So, moving in to.

we're gonna talk today about conflict icebergs. This is a kind of like model for how people understand and can talk about conflict. And the picture that's often drawn is two icebergs next to each other, where they're kind of like, the top bit sticking out the water will be described as people's position in a conflict. So like, that's kind of like what you can see the first time you're looking at some people that are in a conflict, and what you understand about yourself what you understand about other people, and and then the bit underneath the water people will describe what's like the interests chunk. And so that's talking about like, what is their interest that person has in this conflict? Like, what's the stake they have? And, and then at the very bottom, you'll have needs. So that's the deepest bit. And and this will be like, what is the lack of the kind of fundamental need that people are trying to get met in this conflict, and ways that people often describe this tool. So they'll talk about it as like a position-interest-needs or a conflict iceberg tool? And is they'll say that, like, the reason it's useful as you can use it as a way of thinking about like, well, opposition's may seem like they're not overlapping at all. But actually, if you dig down into interests, then even deeper into needs, you'll maybe uncover a section that actually were both motivated by the same need. And that can help build shared understanding and help as a tool to like move through conflict. And I think people I've sometimes hear say, is,

though, like positions are in conflict and interests can be in conflict needs are never in conflict.

TBC as to how true that is. And so let's chat through a example of when that's been useful.

Kat: Yeah. So I was facilitating a group. And recently where we were trying to work out kind of the next phase of what we were going to be doing together. And there were two ideas that were kind of opposing: one was to start reading a book and working through a book together. And the others was to definitely not read that book and not work through that book together. So they were polarities around what we were going to do. And, and we had quite a lot of exploration around why people wanted to read the book and why people didn't want to read the book. And it felt like they were really like, we weren't going to persuade either side to switch. And so I used the iceberg kind of in my head of like, okay, so there's this tension, I don't know our way through, but maybe if we think down a little bit, there'll be something overlapping.

And we actually just jumped straight into needs, I kind of skipped the interests layer, but went into like, what do we need from this group? Like, why are we here, and everybody did a go round. And in sharing why we were there, there was this real desire to share from personal experience to understand what was going on for us internally and as individuals and in the groups that were part of, and the people that were holding up the book as the thing we should do next was because they thoug...

Episode 9 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Ru from the London Campaign Against Police and State Violence (LCAPSV).

“Very often, the best way to realise what you're about is actually to do something, and not get caught up in the semantics of it all the time”

- Ru

Show notes, links

London Campaign Against Police and State Violence website and Twitter.

Some extra reading suggestions and links from Ru:

From Minneapolis to London: who polices the police? (Freedom News, May 2020)

Hackney Community Defence Association

Asian youth movements in Bradford (Working Class History podcast, September 2019)

REVOLUTION IS NOT A ONE-TIME EVENT (The White Review transcript from a June 2020 panel talk)

The Abolition of Carceral Forms (Base, June 2018)

As we didn't get to spend much time talking about NGOs, Incite's classic Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Mariame Kaba: Everything Worthwhile Is Done With Other People (Adi, autumn 2019)

And finally, the Mariama Kaba tweet that was mentioned:

Questions I regularly ask myself when I'm outraged about injustice:

1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself?

2. Who's already doing work around this injustice?

3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support & help to them?

4. How can I be constructive?

Some groups mentioned in the interview were "GBC" (Green and Black Cross) and "ACAB" (Activist Court Aid Brigade).

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Sami: So, Welcome back, everybody, to the Resist Renew podcast. And today we are delighted to have Ru who organises against state violence and also occasionally writes about race, gender, and abolition. Ru is mainly here today wearing a hat of someone who organises with the London Campaign Against Police and State Violence will also be hopefully bringing in other organising experiences. And knowledge is as well. Ru, thanks for coming.

Ru: No worries. Thanks for having me.

Sami: So, to get into it, and could you talk a little bit about the context that you are organising in so I guess broadly, things around like anti violence, campaigning, that kind of stuff? And like, why that's an area that you focus on why you think it's a good area to organise around.

Ru: So I'm generally organising against state violence, and how that manifests in different spaces. So be that police violence, or immigration enforcement and certainly previously gender based violence and how that's exacerbated or accentuated in contact with this state? And why I'm organising. I mean, yeah, there's, I guess over the years, I was thinking about this before I spoke to you guys, like I guess it's coming up to like a decade of organising in different sort of spaces. And the thing I've obviously my politics have developed over time, you would hope that they would over the course of a decade, but the, the specific thing I was kind of come back to is like, yeah, where is the kind of accentuated power manifesting? And that is the state and how does that kind of interact with the lives of working class people, racialized people, migrants? Or Yeah, like, on the basis of your gender and how is articulated so I think for me, it's always kind of this core idea that it comes back to for me and how I organise and even in in how my politics has developed is still the state unfortunately is, perpetrates, the worst violence is against us. And while the things I focus on might change over the years, or I might develop new tactics, or, you know, I don't know, develop my analysis, that's kind of the thing that I always come back to so.

Sami: And I guess, there's a lot of, well, there can be, in my experiences,

Episode 8 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we get into using hand signals ("agreed gestures or shapes that people make with their hands, to communicate in a non-verbal way") as a facilitation tool: what hand signals are useful in facilitation, when they're useful, and their limitations.

'Know why you want to use them, be really clear on what they're for, and keep it kind of simple.' - Ali

Show notes, links

The perenially-useful Seeds for Change have a PDF that covers a lot of the hand signals you may see in meetings.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Hello again, this is the Resist+Renew podcast. And this is the time where we talk about facilitation tools where we geek out and examine some of the things that groups might use to help things go a bit more smoothly. And this week, we're talking about hand signals. Many people have probably come across these in meetings, it's just a way that you can non verbally communicate to each other. And it can be really useful for the facilitator to get a sense of what's going on in the room, it can be used to get who take turns on who's gonna speak and communicate other things like that. So Sami, do you want to kick us off with a story?

Sami: Yeah, sure. So quick example of a scenario where hand signals have been really useful to me in the past is a situation on a protest. And that was at a Arms Company base in the middle of nowhere, lots of different people coming together for like a coordinated day of action to shut down this space and stop vehicles getting in, stop vehicles getting out. And a lot of people who hadn't interacted before, all doing their own actions separately, but trying to make sure they all threaded together into a good plan and blockade. So what that meant was a lot of quite quick fire coordination with a lot of people that you've literally never met before in your life, you have no idea what the plans are, you don't really know what you're going to be trying to coordinate together. But you may be trying to talk about how you can collaboratively and effectively block a road and things like that. And so having like a shared idea of hand signals. And what I guess that kind of leads to is a shared idea of how like a conversation will be structured, which goes into the link, I guess, between hand signals and consensus, which we can maybe talk about, is really enabled, and made a lot more possible, making really quick decisions with strangers in a way where I think if you were just limited to talking, especially in an environment where there's a lot of police around, and you're trying to make a plan, which is really contingent on the police not knowing what you're doing. And having being able to like form up a little circle and do little signals and whatever to each other to indicate agreement, and things like that meant everything went a lot more smoothly than it could have done. So that's a vote of love for hand signals. So worth noting, in the prep chat for this not entirely love for hand signals. So I guess, let's move on to maybe what we see some of the limitations being.

Kat: Yes, I guess I don't use hand signals very much. And I think one of the reasons is because I had a fairly negative experience when I first came across them, which was a lot of people using hand signals and not explaining to me what they were. And coming into a group where people were using lots of signals that I didn't understand felt quite excluding. It also felt a bit culty. And I couldn't really engage because I didn't know what was happening.

Episode 7 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview D and Dot from The Classwork Project.

“Thinking that we can just, because we've read some Marx or wherever, that we can start acting in a non capitalist way all the time is silly”

- Dot

Show notes, links

You can find The Classwork Project online, plus specifically:

the Lumpen journal

their class workshops

Dot's poetry

D's books

Some of the academics and philosophers mentioned were: Stephanie Lawler; Nancy Fraser; Bordieu; Marx.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Kat: Welcome to the Resist and Renew Podcast. Today we're joined by Dorothy Spencer and D Hunter from the Classwork project. It's really great to have you both.

Kat: Dorothy is an editor of the Lumpen journal and member of the class work project. She was born in London and has a background in community and mental health work. Her first book of poetry was published this year with Lumpen publishing titled “see what life is like”. And D is an ageing chav and anarchist inspired community worker. He is the author of two books “Chav solidarity” and “Tracksuits, traumas and class traitors”, auto ethnographic examination of poverty, trauma, community organising and social movements. He is a member of the Class Work Project workers Co Op. And what is too much football. Great to have you both, very welcome.

D: Thanks for having us.

Kat: So first question is what's the context that you're organising in? And why did you choose to focus on this?

D: So I said I take this one. Not that you gave us questions in advance. So I guess there's two contexts, it's probably worth talking about first. I think the bigger one first, which is, you know, the global class, global and national class systems, which we're all like, anyone who's listening to this exists within which, I guess this is a tricky thing. And once one of the parts where,

like, as a coop we’re still having conversations about, but we also have these conversations with the writers and the, you know, people who write for them, and they participate in that conversation. But I suppose it is like, what's the analysis of class? There's definitely like, some hard and fast dogma going around out there are people saying this is what a class analysis is In fact, I think we got a tweet response, not so long ago, when we were publicising it was do they use class analysis, as if it's a singular thing. But what we have is like different competing analysis, analyses And I guess that's part of the context we're looking at, like, we're thinking about class as purely this like relationship to production. Like you're working class, if you don't own the means of it, you're the owning class, if you do. That's one analysis, that's fine. It's useful in some contexts. And I don't think any of us who are part of Classworks think that's the whole and simple answer to it. There's also like the relational aspects of, you know, how class is lived, how class impacts our interactions with the social world and the cultural world. I think some of us might, I think everyone in the class works, again, pays a little bit more attention to that analysis. But fundamentally, like it, I think, Nancy Fraser talks about, like, the recognition versus the redistribution, and I guess those two analyses kind of fit roughly along that kind of paradigm. And whilst whilst we probably spend more time within Lumpen, particularly, the journal and the workshops, thinking about the recognition, but we also like we do, you know, we've literally got a redistribution project going, we had a redistribution project, we also think a lot about that. But this,

Episode 6 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we get into "fishbowls" as a facilitation tool: what they are, when they're useful, and their limitations.

'That's a key component - you go into it expecting to listen 80% of the time.' - Ali

Show notes, links

Find "Fish bowl" on Seeds for Change's tools page. See Training For Change's tool description for an example of how to use fishbowls in practice.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: So welcome back to the toolbox as part of the Resist and Renew podcast. This is where we geek out and look at what might be in your facilitator's toolbox, looking at different tools, what they're good for, why you might use them, and what their limitations are.

Kat: And this week, we're going to be looking at the fishbowl. And I'm going to start us off by explaining a bit about what the fishbowl is. And so fishbowl is when you want to have a conversation between a few people when you've got a larger group, and you would set up the room with two circles, a large circle where most people would sit and then a smaller circle in the middle. And this allows for a few people to be having a conversation while everybody else is able to observe and sometimes interact with that conversation. So there are two main kinds of fishbowl that I want to talk to us about. One is an open fishbowl and the other is a closed fishbowl. So the closed fishbowl is when the seats in the middle circle stay the same. So you have the same people having a conversation for the duration. And it's not possible for anybody else to join that conversation, which means everybody else on the outside is just in the listening and observer role.

Kat: Then you can also have an open fishbowl where you have one seat in the middle that is there that people can use on the outside circle to join the inside circle. And that allows for different people to move in and out of the conversation for the duration, which can make it much more interactive, and then that a closed fishbowl but which one you want depends a little bit on what you're trying to do with the conversation.

Ali: Sweet. I guess the only other thing to add is that you can have like choices on how those people move in and out. Sometimes it's like an empty seat, which is a bit then it puts the onus on like the people in the middle to decide who's gonna leave. And sometimes you tap the person on the shoulder who you want to kick out of the middle circle which requires a bit more guts, but I like it because you get to like get rid of someone who's spoken a lot.

Sami: Like going right into the conflict.

Kat: Who taps out? Someone from the outside circle goes in and says I want you to leave?

Ali: Yeah. I like bold, bold,

Sami: Beef, beef. So, example of fishbowl in practice. So in 2016 am in a few people organised an event called “Building effective solidarity”, which was bringing together a lot of people that do things that could broadly return solidarity work from a lot of different kind of environments, with the aim being like bringing together different people from different backgrounds and seeing how they could work together and learn from each other. And one of the aims for that day was we wanted to make sure that we centred voices that aren't always listened to or heard in a lot of the like kind of conversations that happen around solidarity and like the what I see as the mainstream of like grassroots political organising in London in the UK. And so what we thought a great tool for that would be was having a fishbowl. And so we had a few hand selected people that ...

Episode 5 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Peninah from the Racial Justice Network (RJN).

“We have race at the core of the work and then see how it intersects with other other struggles or identities.”

- Peninah

Show notes, links

Racial Justice Network website + Twitter. A few slices of their work:

The Collective Conversations project

Stop the Scan

13th Recommendation on climate justice

Black and Brown community space

Unlearning Racism Collective

International solidarities with Brazil and Kenya

COVID Response

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me, Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: So welcome everybody. Welcome back to the Resist+Renew podcast. Sami and I are interviewing Peninah Wangari-Jones today from the Racial Justice Network. And we're really excited to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Peninah: Thank you for having me.

Ali: So a little bit about Peninah. Peninah Wangari-Jones is an anti racist activist organiser and director of the Racial Justice Network, and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Manchester, focusing on how coloniality shapes black activism. Peninah was born and raised in Kenya, her experiences of discrimination and racism, after migrating to the UK became a catalyst for fighting for racial and social justice. She is interested in race equity, intersectionality, migration, coloniality and internationalising social movements, what a great list of things to be interested in, like, so excited to see where we go from here. So thank you. Um, to kick us off, we would love to know a bit about the contexts you are organising. And so like, what do you see as like, the issues that are of, like, the most urgent or the most pressing things that you're focusing on right now? And how do you choose those things?

Peninah: Yeah, I think perhaps it just kind of fits all within the interest. And so yeah, race equity, race. Raising awareness, raising awareness about racism and stuff like that. It's kind of where we sit. And definitely the organisation, but I know the organisation has been informed by like it says there a bit of my own journey. And so part of it right now, I think, as we know, these would not just got COVID, we had the murder of George Floyd, which is kind of more recently just pushed a lot of things out there. But we also know, like, in terms of the treatment of black and brown people, is this kinda goes on centuries. And so the choice to kind of the question was around how do we tackle racism, because there's a sentiment that we kind of go into the spaces, and everybody's talking about equality and diversity, and that nobody's kind of really like bold or courageous enough to kind of go down the race route. And we felt a little bit of that was intentional, but the consequences of that, we will feeling those consequences. So the desire to push, race and colour, make race, like bit more mainstream, was something that we wanted, but also kind of, to build solidarities across. So sometimes, there's a feeling that if somebody is working on this just doing race, as opposed to race and other oppressions and struggles. So it felt right, and he felt fair to kind of really start to begin to connect these struggles in terms of who really interested in tilting or dismantling, they're not just the white supremacy structures, but imperialism, capitalism, and all of that stuff. We needed to kind of do the interconnectedness of race and class and, you know, a migration, gender, sexual orientation and all of those things. And so at the moment, that's kind of where we are. That's what we do. And it's not been easy for sure. And but we also, I think there was an another angle,

Episode 4 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we get our nerd on about "check-ins" as a facilitation tool: what they are, when they're useful, and their limitations.

'Notice what intention you have when you're trying to do a check in, and bring that intention as much as you can into the way that you hold the space.' - Katherine

Show notes, links

Find "Check-in" on Seeds for Change's tools page.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Sami: Okay, so welcome to the toolbox from Resist + Renew. This is a podcast where we geek out about different tools in our facilitation toolbox, what they are when they’re useful, and their limitations. And today we are talking about check ins. So first things first, what are check ins. So like check ins are a name that we use for kind of tools where people can share how people are doing. And within the context of a meeting or a workshop. often they're used at the start of a workshop, but not entirely. And they can also be a useful tool to check in on how people are feeling in the middle of something after lunch after something stressful happened at the end, etc. And they are generally used to help facilitators and potentially other people get an eye on how people are doing and like how people engage how people respond to questions, etc. and can be depending on how they are used a good way to like build connection within groups and build that relationship with them groups. And one thing that people often do, which is like a crossover between check ins and icebreakers is often people will as a check in have a kind of like icebreaker question, because it's a very low intensity way into a workshop. So for example, like, What's your favourite vegetable? Or why'd you like autumn, or whatever? And so that's what a check in is. Anyone else have anything else to describe the check in before we move into a little bit of an example?

Ali: Often, like a go round format as well, it's not, it's usually not just like, open space, and everyone chuck in and stuff. It like tends to be in a circle format. Just I think that's mostly to make it flow easier, and to make the threshold for speaking as low as possible, as well. So that's what a check in is. And yeah, I'm just going to share a little story about like examples of when, or an example of when we've I've used one. So a couple of years ago, a few friends came over to my mum's farm in Wales, and it wasn't like a workshop thing. But it was kind of hybrid holiday hybrid hangout and work, have discussions kind of space. So it's pretty low pressure situation. Yeah, we had, we had offerings of discussions, we had fun tasks to do around but it wasn't like, there was any, like, major purpose. And every day, we just had a check in for like, an hour or two is pretty chill. And I think it just added to the vibe, changed it from like just hanging out to something a bit more collective, something a bit more hearing about where everyone is at. And yeah, that was good. And I think, though there was no, there was no intention to do anything particularly difficult. But like people did bring up some like, intense stuff. And I think that's like, partly because we had a space for that. So yeah, it's kind of nice. Anyone else want to add anything? example wise?

Kat: I mean, I feel like that is a really lovely example. And I wonder like whether those people that were there maybe had some experience of check ins and, and why we might use them. And I guess a lot of the experience I've had of check ins in groups where they've not worked so well, has been like,

Episode 3 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Josina from Land In Our Names (LION).

So yeah, I mean ending racism, loads of black farmers, lots of use of the land that's in accordance with spiritual practices or farming practices from places where we have heritage.

- Josina, on LION's vision for land justice

Show notes, links

Land In Our Names: website; Instagram.

Willowbrook Farm

Aweside Farm

Black Girls Hike

Black Girls Camping

Land for the Many report

Oxford Real Farming Conference

Soul Fire Farm

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for joining us again at the Resist and Renew podcast. This week we are joined by Josina Calliste from Land in our Names and we're going to be talking about land inequalities, race, and visions for a more just relationship to land here in the UK and more broadly.

Ali: So Josina Calliste is a health professional, a community organiser, and after burning out of academia, she began thinking more deeply about food growing and land justice. Under an apple tree in June 2019, she co founded Land in our Names a Black led collective addressing land inequalities affecting black people and people of colour, his ability to farm and grow food in Britain. She loves forest works and hopes one day to set up an eco village. Thanks so much for joining us, Josina.

Josina: Thanks for having me.

Ali: So we're going to talk about a lot of different things today. But if you could kick us off by talking about, you know, kind of what's the context that Land in our Names is organising in, why why land justice? And why coming at it from like a race perspective? And yeah, what's what's kind of the context that we're, we're in?

Josina: Oh, so just small questions, then. Yeah, there's huge inequalities in terms of land ownership in Britain, which is sort of only vaguely aware of, but land ownership is very invisiblised in this country. We do know that half of all land in England is owned by 1% of the population. And it's concentrated into the hands of the elite, the crown, the royal family, aristocrats, and other random sets of oligarchs from various places, the church, universities. But lots of people don't know this. And it seemed important to approach land injustices using a racial justice lens, because of the effects of those inequalities on the health and well being of Black people and people of colour in Britain. And the more that I go into food growing, and the farming world, which can mean that you're in very white spaces, particularly in permaculture, and, you know, lots of lovely hippie New Age environments, aren't necessarily engaged with those racial justice issues.

Josina: But it did seem really important because of how food inequalities affect black people. And women of colour who experience hunger or, you know, using food banks disproportionately. Health inequalities due to living in very polluted areas or in overcrowded areas of Britain. And those inequalities have become more stark due to COVID and lock down conditions and to the inequalities in access to green spaces. And yeah, outdoor environments, particularly parks and inner cities.

Ali: Hmm. Yeah, I think that's really important. I don't think many people necessarily draw those two aspects together. I think farming, like in most people's mind, or is like a mainstream narrative is, is quite white. And it's quite, mostly just about like countryside and maybe it's like nice nature and food. But I think drawing that with the structural inequalities you were talking about is really important.

Ali: Yeah, my mom is actually a farmer.

Episode 2 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we get our nerd on with an overview of facilitation, and why it's important.

'There is no such thing as no design, just bad design. The same is true with facilitation' - Sami

Show notes, links

Other facilitation collectives:

Seeds for Change

Navigate

Tripod

Rhizome

Organising for Change

London Roots

Some facilitation resources:

Facilitation tools hand out

Online facilitation tips (R+R mutual aid session video)

Doing virtual trainings: top tips; a sample online meeting agenda

For the nerds who really want detail: a 50 page online facilitation guide; a 40 page general facilitation guide.

Transcript

Kat: This is Resist + Renew. A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Sami: So welcome everybody to the toolbox. This is a podcast where we geek out about different tools in our facilitator toolbox, where they are, when they're useful, and their limitations. But today, for this first one, we are going to do something a little bit different. This chat may be slightly longer than the normal toolbox episodes, because we're not just going to talk about one specific tool, but we're going to talk about facilitation in general. Because this is a podcast about facilitation tools, so probably/ makes sense to start with what is facilitation? So who's going to start? Facilitation? What is it?

Ali: I can start us off. So I guess the first point is facilitation, mostly just about making it easy for a group to do whatever it's set out to do. Facilitation, if you like, etymology comes from the French word “facile”, which is like to make easy. So it's basically just like, a group has an idea of like, what it wants to do. And we're facilitators, like, sets out about making that possible. That's step number one.

What else is it?

Kat: I guess it's also about making space for participation, and thinking about what are the kinds of things we can do that ensure everybody who is in the meeting or in the workshop or in the group can participate as much as they want to. And so in order to do that, we want to think about a few different things. So taking some time at the beginning and throughout the meeting, to build trust, to make people feel safe enough that they can share what they need to share. And so this could include things like doing a go round, where we find out a little bit about each other. So we might share our name, our pronoun, maybe where we've travelled from, maybe how we're feeling that day, maybe something that's happened in our week. I've also been in meetings where people have been asked to share things about like the history of their name. So you get a bit more information about people than just an initial just name check. And can also be really useful to give clear instructions, and so that everybody in the session or in the meeting knows what's being asked of them. And when you have that clarity, it's a lot easier to contribute. And then also asking open ended questions. So a closed ended question would be something that has maybe a yes or no, or a very specific short answer, but an open ended question let’s people just share whatever it is that they want to share in response to that question. And that can be a really good way of getting people talking, especially people that might not talk very much at other times. What else is facilitation good for?

Sami: So I think, as a way of doing things, and what a facilitator will often try and do is make sure that meetings, workshops, etc, are engaging, and by mixing up different activities, and different ways of engaging with different parts of the meeting, or workshop or whatever. So that could be making sure there's different mediums media,

Episode 1 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Kelsey from Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE).

Show notes, links

Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol)

Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE): website; Instagram @no_more_prisons; their "Defund the prison estate" petition

Abolitionist Futures' abolitionist reading groups

Sisters Uncut

Port Talbot super-prison proposals axed (BBC News)

Transcript

Kat: This is Resist Renew. A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Alright, welcome to the first episode in the resist and renew podcast. Today we are going to be talking about abolishing prisons in the UK. And we are happy to be joined by Kelsey from CAPE. So a little bit about Kelsey. Kelsey is a prison abolitionist, organiser and freelance facilitator based in London, and as part of Community Action on Prison Expansion, which is a network of grassroots groups fighting prison expansion in England, Wales and Scotland. Prior to COVID, Kelsey has been travelling the UK and abroad delivering workshops and trainings to build collective power in resisting and dismantling the prison industrial complex. Kelsey is also part of Cradle, a transformative justice collective, and also happens to be part of Resist and Renew, which is why we're interviewing her first. Thanks for joining us, Kelsey.

Kelsey: Thanks for inviting me.

Ali: We had to.

Kelsey: Great.

Ali: Yeah, I know Sami is dying to jump in straight into things. But before we do that, just a little note to say this episode's gonna be slightly different to our future episodes in that, normally there will be two hosts. But because this is the first one, we're all just excited to jump in. So all three of us myself, Ali, Sami, and Katherine, or Kat, will be here. And you can hear a bit more about us as people in our teaser, if you haven't listened to that.

Sami: Now is it the time to get into it?

Kat: Yeah,

Sami: I think it is. Okay. So to kick us off. Kelsey, could you tell us a bit about the context that you're organising in with CAPE? Like, why is it that you chose this work specifically?

Kelsey: Thank you for that question, I guess. Well, so I, I'm a prison abolitionist, which means that I fundamentally don't think that our society needs or should have prisons or policing or function with these systems of punishment. And, but it also means that I look critically at what violence itself means. And, and so I include state violence within like that analysis. And so I kind of came to this work first through doing feminist anti violence organising. And through that kind of began to further understand the role of the criminal justice system in the supposed support that survivors receive, particularly in this country.

Kelsey: And yeah, and I basically got involved in a local campaign around Holloway prison, which is a campaign that really shows like so many intersections, I think of this work where it was the biggest women's prison in Western Europe. It was closing down, it was closed in 2016. But that doesn't mean that all of the people who are held in that prison were actually released, it means that they were just shipped off to different prisons around the country. And in fact, Holloway, because it was the only women's prison that's actually really in London, you know, it's in Islington and so many people who held there, were actually still quite close to their communities, it's much easier for people to visit prison in London than one in rural Surrey, or elsewhere on the English countryside. Right. And so it the kind of impact that that has on a community. And the way that that is actually tied to what do they want to use that land for?