Module 4: Reflections on the journey so far

This module has me looking back to all that has happened since Changemakers Lab started, and I am in awe of the transformation that this space has invited. Here I found courage to name and state the change I want to bring into the world. Here I found the support to move towards turning my ideas into reality by taking baby steps. Here I have begun engaging with my safe/brave spaces and I learn so much each time we meet. I have two circles who sustain me, teach me, challenge me, help me grow and learn - to the best of my ability. 

I will share a few learnings at the end of my update, but I want to first share my answers to questions around the problem and tactics that I analyzed looking back at the work (it is so much easier looking back! :P)

What is the problem you are trying to tackle?

In the middle of the sixth mass extinction, we as humans have the opportunity to weave a new story into our world - one that includes each other and our innate presence as nature. 

So far, we have been numbed and corseted by centuries of capitalism, patriarchy, casteism, white supremacy, colonialism and ageism. Through schooling and the prison industrial complex, life is presented to generations of people as a striving towards the impossible while torturing oneself for being simply human. 

The cracks and apertures are here, and my initiative is an attempt to slip into the spaces in between. To name, feel and release grief and trauma. To celebrate autonomy, naturalness, authenticity, abundance, pleasure and joy. 

Is it part of a bigger issue?

The problem at hand is part of the issue of being human in nature - as one of uncountable species. It is part of facing climate change with grace. It is part of finding presence in systems and structures that constantly tell people how to feel until naming one’s own needs and wants becomes a struggle and a source of guilt and shame. 

Who else is addressing it and how?

Happily, many people are naming this issue and working towards finding new ways of being in creative and iterative processes. Some examples from a global scale that speak to my personal sense of purpose are - 

Alixa Garcia - Creates art (painting, poetry) to name and address the present context. Offers a course on the imaginal - a space for reuniting with spirit, ancestors, nature and community as we walk this path we are constantly creating.

Bayo Akomolafe - Naming the context in his writings. Creating courses on slipping into the liminal in a profoundly slow and present way.

adrienne maree brown - Looking at emergent strategy from a movement lens, particularly for black feminists. Writing and meme-ing about systemic failures and new ways of being (science fiction) through pleasure activism and biomimicry.   

People are addressing the issues of this time on the planet through art, activism, spirituality, education, and a personal intervention by doing life differently. Tending the flame plugs into all of this, mostly into trusting communities to generate their own personal interventions in a way that feels safe, brave, healing and connected. 

My response to the problems I see - 

Tending the flame is a safe/brave space that invites experiments to relearn how to be oneself in community when one is breaking the invisible shackles of social norms about how to behave, present, speak, give, receive - every conceivable act of life.

The first iterations of this space have begun as pilots. My first pilot began in June 2022 and continues to meet monthly. This is a small group with chosen family who already know each other and share many values.

The second iteration is my pilot with a group of almost-strangers, based on a call sent out through networks. Here is a SMART framework for the goals of my pilot - 

So far, some learnings I have accumulated from my project include - 

• Make apertures for multiple realities to exist - people taking a break, people being tired, people being present.

• Know that there are infinite ways to do this and there is no right way. Trust the iterations.

• Give people options.
• Move at the speed of trust.

• Apologise when someone cannot be prioritised in a group space and acknowledge that their experience is valid and important.

• Go in with a general plan so if things don’t emerge, there is something to fall back on.

I'll probably write more about this in another post. I don't want to overwhelm the content at hand. I want to leave you with this thought - 

We are struggling as a global community because we adopted a model that assumed infinite resources for a certain set of people, at the expense of other people and nature. We are now facing the consequences of this approach.

It is time to co-create differently. It is time to build together with community, ensuring abundance, not from a point of view of excess, but from feeling/having/being enough. We must give ourselves time, energy and grace to grieve, heal and move through the massive collective and intergenerational trauma we find ourselves in. The only way is through. We start small, we start slow, and patiently work our way from there.

This is my harvest from many lineages - in reading, art, spirituality, education, bloodlines, chosen family, friendships, social change, love, nature. I acknowledge each of them with thanks and blessings.

Sources and Inspirations - 

Mobilization Lab commons library

Emergent Strategy

Pleasure activism

A Course on the Imaginal by Alixa Garcia

The writings of Bayo Akomolafe

World Pulse Changemakers Lab Modules, 2022

Satirical work by Sanitary Panels (artist)