About the Workshop Programme
There are severe problems within our social and environmental movements that relate to power, authoritarianism, sexism and sexual abuse. All too often these issues are dealt with by 'talking the talk' without really addressing the issues in any transformative manner. For example, all movements will openly talk about the need to engage the working class, to overcome oppression, to operate more democratically, to fight sexism, and so on, and will give detailed political narratives on these issues that sound impressive, yet still be guilty of continuing to engage in and legitimise these attitudes and behaviours behind the scenes.
To that end these workshops are not aimed at educating people on the politically correct positions they should adopt on these matters, at what they should or should not say in order to sound like they have addressed the problem, or at pointing the finger of blame elsewhere, but are focused instead on actually dealing with these issues as they currently exist within us all, at rooting them out, and as a result at raising consciousness of these issues and bringing about a greater level of self-responsibility and maturity in combating them.
These workshops are aimed at helping to create mature movements that have actually done their deep inner work and overcome the harmful behaviours and attitudes we are all conditioned into and embody as we grow up, exposed as we are to all the harmful influences that typify contemporary life. As a result these workshops have been developed with a view to addressing the social injustice that exists within contemporary grassroots movements (as opposed to the wider society) and that prevent full democratisation and the wider diffusion of anarchist principles, and that are also not addressed by any existing NGOs.
How to Book a Workshop: use the contact form on this website to book a workshop.
Workshop Prices: uness indicated otherwise the workshops are day long (10am-4pm) and are priced at £200 in addition to the travel, accommodation and food costs of the facilitator(s).
About the Facilitators: Each workshop has at least one facilitator to run the workshop. Each facilitator is an experienced individual who will talk from their own experience and who can be considered an 'elder' of social and environmental movements, able to pass on their wisdom and lifelong learning to others. Nobody who is a facilitator for Social Change is a newbie who has been specially trained to run these workshops. Instead, each person has gained their experience working for many years within social and environmental movements and have also overcome significant adversity and oppression in their lives, and this is the experience they bring and share in these workshops. This is what makes these workshops unique. They are a labour of love and they are done to bring about healing and rapprochement and to raise consciousness within our movements.
Challenging: These workshops deal with live issues that can trigger strong responses within people, and as a result those who take part will find them challenging.
Each of the workshops are listed below and a brief narrative given. More detail will be provided later in the year (2025).
1. Class and the prison experience: how grassroots movements ignore the social injustice and harm done by the widespread use of punitive incarceration and how we can provide real reconciliation for ex-cons within our movements.
The Brief: this is a workshop delivered and run by an ex-prisoner based on his own experience of working within grassroots movements over the last 20 years. There is little to no solidarity within grassroots movements for ex-prisoners despite an acknowledgement in some quarters that the prison system is harmful and toxic. No spaces are created to provide healing and rapprochement and neither are the injustices and emotional traumas adequately dealt with. Furthermore there remains widespread legitimisation of the criminal and court systems which serves to maintain the wall of oppression on, and silencing of, the criminalised classes.
This workshop takes a closer look at crime and punitive social isolation and the issues that ex-prisoners face and how our movements can develop a greater awareness of them and also create spaces that provide genuine social reconciliation.
2. The Lion in the Room: overcoming autoritarianism in consensus-based social spaces.
The Brief: while consensus-based social spaces have effectively dealt with the visible forms of authoritarianism they fail to address the passive-aggressive forms which remain rife and widely legitimised. This is a challenging workshop that aims to identify the common forms of social authoritarianism within our movements, how they limit the spread of anarchist ideals, and to provide space to look at alternative ways of anarchist organising.
3. Emotional Pathways in Conflict: emotional pathways for dealing with the fallout of oppression within our movements.
The Brief: grassroots movements are often characterised by people who have experienced trauma within society and who have joined movements in order to address these faults. This trauma can often be the cause for significant hostility if it goes unaddressed, in which case activism becomes a tool to express hostility and retribution rather than a tool for the greater good. That trauma can also end up being replayed within grassroots movements.
This workshop aims to look in detail at the emotional pathways and assembled causes that propel us in certain directions in life when we come into contact with others or experience oppression, and to provide an emotional map that allows us to understand where we are at, where we came from, what we need to do, and how we can find healing and closure so that our activism can mature and respond appropriately to the social problems of our time, rather than being used as a vehicle to express hostility.
4. Challenging Passive-Aggressive Patriarchy: a workshop that examines the use of passive-agressive male domination of women within our movements.
The Brief: this is a specialitst form of the 'Lion in the Room' workshop aimed specifically at addressing the use of passive-aggression to dominate and control women for emotional and sexual purposes.
5. Chellenging Feminism: a workshop that challenges the use of feminist ideology to wage war on men and the widespead 'collateral damage' this causes.
The Brief: women who have been damaged by the experience of patriarchy can often end up waging war on men, with feminist ideology being used as a smokescreen behind which lies the expression of hatred and malice towards men. Ths workshop is aimed at challenging women to recognise and overcome these harmful forms of behaviour and to start reconsidering what healing and reconciliation might look like.
6. Raising Class Consciousness: a workshop that creates space for the raising of class consciousness through challenging commonly held assumptions and prejudices.
The Brief: we recently witnessed the biggest strike wave since the 1980s and the miners strikes yet grassroots movements up and down the country singularly failed to respond. In 2023, at the height of the strike wave, anarchist bookfairs in London and Bristol held no workshops or talks at all on the topic, and to all extents and purposes it was totally ignored. This workshop examines why that was the case and presents a series of exercises and discussions to break the class barriers down and raise a radical 'common people' based consciousness within our movements.
7. Organising as if Social Justice Mattered: a workshop that looks at ways for anarchst ideals to spread to the wider social body.
The Brief: anarchist organising today occurs within rigid collectives that have values that are exlusionary to large numbers of people. These 'in-groups' dominate contemporary anarchist spaces, are policed by social authoritarians (the anarchist equivalent of the 'Stasi'), and keep anarchy locked up within small scattered anarchist 'ghettoes'. Furthermore anarchism is still rooted within a syndicalist context that talks about the need to organise for a class revolution and the instigation of workers collectives.
This workshop aims to challenge these in-groups and their authoritarian practices, and to liberate anarchist organising from these confines and to provide alternative ways for anarchy to be practically organised and for anarchist ideals to spread to the wider social body.