OWO 18

Below is a messy collection of the notes, scribbles, thoughts from the Organise With Others day on 13/01/2018

Email us if you’ve got any additional images and notes or would like material removed from this page:

keepitcomplex2016@gmail.com

How do we offend our guests?

Magda’s object: Ouiji Board

Made by students in workshop who got reprimanded for this by their teachers

Revealed layers of oppression normalised by the students

Set up spaces and situations to question norms, create spaces to talk, narrative mediation

Domestic settings soften institutional spaces

Food as a welcoming tool – questioning ideas of these spaces as elitist

Arawelo Eats

Street food – difficulties of cultural appropriation, entry point for cultural exchange

Brexit increased hate generally –  for anybody identifiably “different” – hyper visible and invisible at the same time

Spice and colonialism – columbus +cinnamon

UK accepts the food, but not the people

Unpicking whiteness/decolonising through food (stories)

National trust (built on sugar & slavery, no mention)

What are the plain polish traditions? Nothing comes purely from there. Migration!

How to use your (non-)political skills in a more political context

Our skills

  • Building websites, social media
  • Events manager
  • Make video games
  • Video activist groups where publicity can help
  • Creative problem solving – forms of activism
  • Artists who work with communities, organise different communities to come together
  • Standing for election (really useful)
  • How can arts be used to communicate
  • Performer (writing, comedy, spoken word)
  • Visual communication, teaching
  • Confident speaker in situations others might feel uncomfortable in
  • Painter, video maker, visual communications
  • Happy to get out of comfort zone

ESOL x political education

Package things in a non-scary way so that schools can invite you

Differences in how radical you can be in different stages: early years, primary, adult education

Secondary schools are such controlled and closed spaces

Impact of fees – from collective to individual, consumer student

Fear of the unsatisfied student

If you represent the institution, how can you still be openly critical, give support but also give way

Student body is more powerful than teachers, but they don’t know it

Let’s not fetishise radical 70s education experiments

What could be your support structures in political education?

Schooling & culture

Make it clear

Say it over and over and over again, until it sinks in

Domestic practices of resistance

What are your strategies for self-preservation? How to divest from (bad) money?

Thanks to Laura Gordon for all the note taking 

Creating spaces to centre those who aren’t usually centred

How do we talk about refugees and migration in a way that casts this as a common human experience and doesn’t create more divisions

Refugee Week is in June 2017 – this year is the 20th anniversary

How and should we mainstream?

Games for the Many

Games as an engaging way to access complex ideas

150,000 downloads of Corbyn run

EU referendum a wake-up call for the gaming industry: how can we contribute to change with the skills we have?

The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem.

Shiri’s announcements:

Finding common goals

Calling in culture instead of calling out culture

Experiencing your emotional responses without becoming consumed by them

Change talk – ask leading questions

Choosing your battles

Not necessary consensus

projects where differences can coexist

People stop listening when you lecture, advice, propose logic, accuse, throw facts around

De-bubble

Self care

  • Not beating yourself up
  • Be realistic
  • Working collaboratively/mutual support
  • Batch cooking!
  • Hold space for unstructured time, reject 24/7
  • It’s ok to stop producing
  • Long breaks
  • Working-to-rule
  • Not overproducing
  • Unionise
  • Set rules
  • Work with others – lawyers, experts in other fields

Money

  • Triodos bank
  • Clean energy fund (ellie harrison)
  • Political campaigning for fairer distribution of wealth
  • Financial literacy/economics
  • Lobby ACE + funders for simplified application process to make it accessible
  • Establish co-ops

“all organising is sci-fi” Octavia Butler

How can we not replicate what we are doing already in the sci-fi worlds?

Student movements against austerity/fee rise – what happened to these energies?

Strategies for self-preservation?

Labour: The World Transformed

Write cultural policy for labour

Womens budget group

What makes a space a political space ? political art as a method not a content

Get in touch with a party – and let them know that political art is NOT JUST GREYSON PERRY

Care 4 calais

The moment we shut up we are lost

Be clearer and more explicit about why you work how you work

people’s assembly against austerity

Another europe

The right to remain

Green and black cross

We need more accidental politicians

Practice, don’t tell

Erasmus and culture until 2020

Merchandise – la batarde

How you get across a message without sounding like a dick?

Privilege of race & job

Step up

Shut up

one year on – who is no longer here? What organisations/groups have folded?

waves of politics

rehearsals for change