Building

We have learned from how movements have evolved and flailed. We have learned the importance of practising our liberation strategies “within”, as part of how we create change “without”. We have learned that a core part of our work is to embody the emancipation that we imagine and are working towards.

Black feminist and other social justice organising has necessarily involved everything from the delivery of support services to strategic advocacy and policy work, to direct action such as demonstrations and public protest. Movement building takes place through community art projects, through conscientisation work and through building social justice theory.

Movement building is not one thing, and it is often necessarily ‘untidy’.  While we recognise that there is no single approach to organising, or fighting for social justice, we also know how respectability politics and various regulatory frameworks can hijack our movement spaces. We also recognise the pervasiveness of anti-blackness and other neo-colonial patterns, even in “BME” organisations and movements. We commit to disrupting these systems and practices.

Project Tallawah’s approach seeks to be responsive to the creativity, vision and innovation that exists in Black feminist led movement spaces that have emerged on these islands. Ultimately, we want to resource space for our communities to reflect, resist, take action, rest, recuperate and thrive.

We position ourselves inside movement building, as we are ourselves organisers, disrupters, and radical dreamers. We ‘have skin in the game’.