Our training and facilitation collective is making a podcast! We will interview UK-based social movement organisers about their work and how they do it, along with doing a good chunk of geeking out about the different tools in our training toolbox.
Transcript
Kat: So this is the Resist+Renew podcast. Resist Renew is a facilitation collective based in the UK. I'm Kat, I don't want to go first in the intros, so can someone else take it?
Ali: My name is Ali, I use he/him pronouns. What brought me to facilitation is taking part in a course which I didn't like, and then creating a study group out of it and doing self learning style stuff, DIY learning collectively. And my favourite emoji is the grimace emoji, but I think of it as like a cheesy Chandler from friends smile.
Sami: Adorable. My name is Sami, I use the pronouns she and her. I got into facilitation. because as anybody that's ever been in a meeting with me will know I have an almost physical inability to sit in meetings that are aggravating, and that are not facilitated in a way that is like participatory. And I also went to a great training run by the facilitation collective called Seeds for Change, like 15 years ago, which really motivated me. And my favourite emoji. Yes, audio. Is so, like of all of the star emojis, there's the one that's like the three stars. Sometimes they're multicoloured, but sometimes they're all like yellow, but they're always different sizes. I sometimes use it for like bullet points and whatsapps because I love it so much.
Kat: Beautiful. My name is Kat. I use she/her pronouns. And I got into facilitation through experiencing a really transformative process and admiring the magic that those facilitators managed to weave and wanting to know how to do it and realising along the way that it's not magic, but I'm still learning. And in terms of my favourite emoji, it's the face with the little heart eyes. I really like it.
Sami: It's a classic. Okay, so we are recording a podcast? What's going on with that?
Sami: Thanks, seamless. This is you can tell we're pros. This is what gives it away.
Ali: So why don't we start by saying a few reasons why we've decided to record a podcast together.
Sami: We are doing this partly because we, as a facilitation collective talk to a lot of groups who do a lot of cool stuff, and, and want to uplift the work of the groups that we like talk to, work with and organise around. And that's a reason.
Ali: Another reason is that we This podcast is gonna focus on how organising happens and digging into like, talking to some exciting groups, but also like chatting about how they do what they do. And because it's hidden, it can seem a bit mysterious or mystical. And it's actually really practical. And hopefully people will want to do more, and be able to do more and get involved more if they hear some stories.
Kat: And this podcast is also specifically for people who want to be organising in the UK. And so we're going to be talking with groups that are organising here, and specifically within their political context of the UK. And there aren't actually that many podcasts that we found that are talking about social movements that are based here, there's loads of great stuff coming out of the US. But we have a different political context here. So it feels important to acknowledge that and share some of the stories from movements that are based here.
Sami: And then in terms of like, why a podcast specifically? Because the kind of chats we want to have, like we want to get a little bit deep in terms of like, why they do what they do, where they focus on what they focus on to kind of create a blog post that would cover that amount of detail, it would be a very long blog post. So trying to get the depth that we want there in a format that makes it a bit more like engaging and dynamic and chatty.
Ali: Nice. So in this podcast, we're gonna be interviewing, like, on our first series,
