Season 2 episode 9 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about safer spaces policies, as a tool that groups use for a variety of reasons.

'Safer spaces policies can create a void that people will then fill with punitive approaches to difficulty, difference and conflict'

Show notes, links

After a callout for safer spaces agreements, a few groups kindly offered to have their agreements shared, to give you some examples:

AFem2014 policy + explainer + glossary (though the event wasn't without issues: see this write-up and another write-up)

SWARM conference in 2019

Sisters Uncut

Young FOE Scotland has a longer safer spaces agreement,  a more concise policy, and they will also sometimes make group agreements or smaller policies built on these too for specific events

Iconiq Academy’s braver spaces agreement

A few other resources that we mentioned in the episode:

Mainstreams and margins

The distinction between calling in and calling out

Perennial resources:

our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).

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

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist Renew,

KATHERINE

the 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

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

KATHERINE

Welcome to today's episode of the toolbox, we're going to be looking at the safer spaces policies today. This is a tool that groups can create: we're going to be finding out what they are, talking about the pros and cons of using a safer spaces policy and sharing our top take-aways. Sami, do you want to tell us a little bit about what safer spaces policies are?

SAMI

I would love to Katherine! So I think safer spaces policies are often some kind of like written document or some kind of agreement. Often around the topic of like resisting societal oppressions, and they will name like, often the beliefs of like a group or a space and some intentions to resist these societal impressions. And sometimes mentioning what they think those versions of societal oppression are, for clarity, that aren't going to be like, welcome in the space in whatever way they mean. And sometimes they will include some bit about what they'll do to like, actually resist the societal oppressions. Not always. And I guess maybe there's a distinction to make here between like something that is like more of a policy, which is like, ‘this is what we think and blah, blah, blah,’ and maybe more something that's like a process, which is like, ‘we’ll actually do this or handle these situations in this way.’ So that's like one distinction to draw out now. Ali, do you wanna nuance that up?

ALI

Oh, God, pressure. So safer spaces. It's a bit of a weird term if you haven't been around it much. So a bit of background as to why it's called that. Previously, people used to talk about creating “safe spaces,” as in places that people will feel comfortable to share things and they won't get a deal with oppression and stuff. But because that's not possible, because we live in the real world, we try and mitigate against oppressions, rather than making them completely safe. So safer.

There are variations: some people have come up with the term braver spaces, which is, again, about showing up and dealing with things as they arise rather than creating safety.

So a bit about why we are talking about safer spaces, safer spaces policy in a season about conflict. That's because often conflicts within groups relate to both societal oppressions and how they are replicated in our spaces. And/or conflict can stem from the uses of policies and bureaucracy. E.g. people will say, “you did this thing, and that's against the rule, therefore, we're going to punish for you, or make you do this thing because of that.” And so policies might end up replicating punitive justice.

But, Sami, do you want to tell us an example of a safer spaces policy that you've been around?

SAMI

Yeah, sure. So I was involved in a crew of people that was organising an anarchist feminist conference in London in 2014. And I was part of the crew that was trying to work out like how we wanted to handle this topic of like, safer spaces within this one day event, basically.

And so what we thought that it would be useful to do is so - people, people started that process of like writing what is maybe what you could think of like a ‘standard’ safer spaces policy, where it's like, ‘here are some versions of societal oppression, we think these are bad, and we don't think people should replicate those in our space.’ And then we were like, ‘I don't actually think this is very useful for people. Like, I don't think this is actually going to help anyone do anything. And I don't think this is really going to provide much to actually resist the sight of societal oppression.’

So what we tried to do was shift it a little bit into more of like a process, we were like, what did we think people would actually need to be able to resist those oppressions and so and then use that to identify what some interventions could be. So we were like, maybe if you don't want to raise something in a group don't in a in a in a in a workshop directly, but you want it to be raised, maybe that's one you can tell and they can raise stuff for you. Or like maybe we should have specific spaces to support people to be able to raise stuff at different points throughout the day. And so, like, added these different things in so that people could actually try and solve stuff.

And we did that because we thought that maybe just having a safer space is for policy on its own, which is kind of a quite a common thing, felt quite limited. And, and I guess that's gonna lead into when we think about strengths and weaknesses, and things like that. Because I think probably, TL;DR these are the kind of things which when done well are good. And when done not well probably aren't good, probably like all things. So who, who wants to start with some strengths?

KATHERINE

I can, I think one, one of the strengths of a safer spaces policy is that it can name the values of a group or space. And if you're a new person who maybe has never been to that group before, seeing these stated somewhere, clearly, for example, on the group's website, can really help you judge maybe whether or not you want to go along, whether you want to work with that group, join that group, for example; and can give a good indicator of the group's awareness of what kind of oppression exists in the world and what they are trying to work against in their space or work to resist, as Sami framed it. What are other strengths of this tool?

ALI

Yeah, and I think another strength: I guess, at its best, what safer spaces policies can do is provide structure to address replications of societal oppressions in your space.

So there is a bit of a holding for that, that, you know, you can turn to and as Katherine said, this, like, named that this is the values and intentions of the space. And we're going to do something about it.

SAMI

Yeah, and I think we talked, we talked quite a lot, I think in episode one, if I remember correctly, around, like the importance of like, clarity of language, when we talk about things like this, and sometimes what people will use as, like these kinds of documents, like safer spaces, policies for is to like outline: ‘When we say, racism, we mean, these types of things. And we don't mean, some things that may get called racism in society, like anyone referring to race. That's not what we count as racism,’ whatever.

And or, for example, what we what counts as, when we talk about we want to do stuff to like, repair harms, what do we mean by harm, so they can provide a space that really have clarity of terms, which can smooth future conversations about stuff.

ALI

So those are some of the strengths. What do people think about some weaknesses of safer spaces policies?

SAMI

I can start with my main one, it was, you alluded to it at the start Ali, which is around like, how safe spaces policies can link in with like punitive approaches within groups. I think, a thing that I often see as a limitation of having these like safer spaces policies, when they are more of a policy, and they don't really, aren't really backed up by any form of process, is what can happen is people have flagged to them, ‘You should do something, if you see there is like something that you would deem like, like realising operate like a, an operation, in service of racism in the space’ or whatever, like, ‘You should do something about that.’ But if you don't give them guidance for what to do, then they will fall back on what the norms are for how things should be dealt with, and how you should deal with difficult situations, which often a lot of the things that people are drawing from is punitive frameworks, because that's what we use in school. That's what we use in, in people's work and all this kind of stuff.

And so you can create a void that people will then fill with punitive approaches to difficulty, difference and conflict. And so I think that can create difficulties. And those can be amended by making sure that you don't provide that vacuum by trying to be clear about like, what are the ways that you will actually deal with stuff? And how, what kind of outcomes do you want, if you don't want punishment to be the default response. What are the responses that you want?