Lifelong commitment not a mornings training session to tick boxes…
Safe spaces that allow you to ask when you don’t know and allow you the space to understand
A place for the classroom but emphasised the importance of lived experience
I found the comments about the ineffectiveness of some training were very similar to Asif’s and was interested to hear that the data did not support some of the recommendations that were currently being advised. Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU
in both videos the advice was similar… acknowledge, listen, share, collaborate
I remembered bell hooks all about love 2000
In the all of the reference materials the authors refer to systemic racism in policy and structures,
“the aim in building a framework is to re-centre the issue of ‘race’ in studies of policy, at a time when it is too frequently an ‘absent presence” Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education
Many of the structures and policies we use today are crumbling, there has never been a greater amount of change so quickly with the invention of the internet. I am interested at looking at projects that play with ideas around changing policy… one of my favourites was a few years ago at South London Gallery especially the work of the sortition foundation.
“…many wonder what CRT is doing in a ‘nice field’ like early years education” Ladson-Billings 2004 from Bradbury 2020
It is from early years education I am most inspired, I am sure the children in early years classrooms left to play could teach us much of what we need to move forward quickly. Ref Steiner Christmas Lectures 1924
Thinking about race in the local community I looked at what we are currently working on… choosing food as a inclusive community building activity we created a world food passport for Camberwell and offered residents and visitors the opportunity to try foods from all around the world.
On Camberwell Green i noticed a black history walk that was commissioned at least 10 years ago… maybe 15 and it struck me at how dated it was…
I visited the newly refurbished and rehung National Portrait Gallery, and visited the time is always now which looks at the way artists have reframed the black figure, i loved the way it showed the representation of the black figure in western art history as well as its absence and how it told the story through social and cultural contexts… it inspired me to look further into White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Di Angelo 2018 and compare it to her original paper written in 2011… to be honest, i descended into a PHD black hole and started to investigate micro aggressions. I took the examples from Imperial College. I asked 4 people from different age ranges and asked their thoughts on these micro aggressions and was fascinated by the response…
Then I went here, I was just going to read the intro and the first essay but was quite surprised at what a page turner it was!… loads of really good stuff, lots of interesting stuff lots of not my kind of thing shouty stuff… i was convinced… i was sold but where was the plan, i wanted a list of things to do… my mind went back to the transactual website….