Thu14Jan - London FreeSchool Weekender

[Spadella]

Hello everyone


The London FreeSchool collective has decided to organise another week-end
of skillsharing (we thought about 5-7th March 2010).
This will be the fifth London FreeSchool event since september 2008. We
had tons of workshops, hosted in many different social centres scattered
around london and lots of very diverse people doing and attending
workshops!

To know more about the project check our website:
http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com

The collective started discussing the next FreeSchool weekender, and had
some very interesting and ambitious ideas.
Mainly we would like the next FreeSchool weekender to have a focus on
feminism/gender/anti-sexism.
But at the same time, one of our main aim would be to get a wide range of
people coming, including some that have not been before in feminist spaces
or haven't had access to it. Basically we would like to use the FreeSchool
format to get everyone to think about feminism and anti-sexism issues in
the Freeschool context.
But also, more generally, we would like to create a space where people
could feel safe and free to raise issues (sexism, racism...) or to ask for
help if they felt oppressed/threatened. This would probably mean having a
safer space policy for the whole event. It would also mean trying not only
to have a strong emphasis on sexism but a sort of general background
throughout the week-end about systems of oppression, and make it open for
racism, able-ism, age-ism, classism and other issues to be brought up.

We are then trying to reach out people around us to organise this event
and make it successful!
This is the very beginning and we would like you to come and help shape
this next FreeSchool weekender!

The next meeting will be on Thursday the 14th of January at 8pm, 195 Mare
Street in Hackney (bring some warm clothing!).

You are all invited to come and bring ideas and suggestions!

[Squats-en]

----------------
Only for your information, here are some ideas we had but that obviously
need more diScussion/critics:
- having regular workshops that we would have during a regular freeSchool
event but with a feminist angle/gender issues emphasis (for example:
housing with specific discussion on women's housing situation...),
- feminism/gender/sexism related workshops,
- maybe some non-mixed sessions/workshops for "highly gendered" topics
(bike fixing, electricity, plumbing, IT...) where some of us felt that it
would be much more empowering for women to be in a non mixed environment,
- empasizing the questionning of genders,
- a small debrief at the end of each workshop (maybe with questions like:
did you feel you had enough space to express yourself during the workshop?
have you noticed any oppressive behavior/language during the workshop?),
- a daily debrief (during dinner) open to everyone and with at least the
facilitators of the day's workshops.
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