During Black Lives Matter Protests in the summer of 2020, many white people started waking up to the ever present trauma and violence of systemic racism, white supremacy and racial oppression. This process must be sustained and continued.

Working on our internalised racism & opening our eyes to how racism plays out within ourselves, our relationships and the systems we live in is essential if we are going to end racism. It’s a life long process but if we persevere and do this work together, it is guaranteed change will happen.

What to Expect

Awareness: In this session we will give space for you to acknowledge with honesty where you are right now, to sit with and work through discomfort together. We will support with somatic and socratic questioning techniques, to help open new layers of awareness and motivation to reflect and educate yourself further.

Recommended Resources: This session is run for white people by white people because a lot of women of colour in particular, do a lot of free emotional labour trying to educate white people when really we should be doing it ourselves. Some women of colour offer paid courses and resources, we highly recommend these options. This class is an additional resource, a starting block, hopefully it will open some crucial initial doors.

Deep Listening: Listening to POC friends and having empathetic conversations on this topic can be really nourishing for both of you. We hope that we can offer some grounding tools to start such conversations from a place of understanding, to help you feel embodied and open to listen.

Safe Space: We believe it is important to feel like you are in a safe enough space to make mistakes without causing harm to others. You can ask all the dumb questions here that are not appropriate to burden POC people with.

Constructive Questioning: This is a non-judgemental space but we will point out areas that need longer term reflection through opening questions.

The Group

This is loosely-facilitated space but we have some regulars: Sabina Menotti is a youth and community worker based in Berlin and Anna-Liisa is a teacher, activist and facilitator from London/Amsterdam, Tiana is a performance artist. All continue to do their own anti-racist work and process. We also have people attending completely new to the work, join us wherever you are at.

Practicalities

~ Despite it being aimed at white people, we mean that in the broadest sense, if you aren’t sure how you identify or you feel called to do this work too as a POC, please come along, we all have internalised racism and varying levels of privilege to contend with.

~ We are a womxn’s community (trans inclusive term for women), but this session is open to all genders, men included! We’d love to have you. 🙂

~ Bring paper and a pen

~ No Experience necessary: Everyone can and will work from where they are.

~ JOIN FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD and be aware of time difference!

~ Donation is recommended but optional – we collect some funds to maintain the space, any remaining funds are donated to a BLM charity. The option to donate after the session will be brought up at the end of a group with a donation link.

~ This workgroup size is limited.

~ We take online security very seriously, we have taken the advised precautions to make this call as secure as is possible.

~ Further Questions? Email mandorla.london@gmail.com

~ Aim to arrive at least 5 minutes before the start time on zoom, this is a safe space, if you are more than 10 minutes late you will not be able to join the group as the call will be locked.