In Our Hands programme outline:

10 March - 5 May

Mondays 6 - 9pm

In Our Hands is a nine week programme of workshops facilitated by Lisa Fannen and Sapna Agarwal. The sessions will explore radical approaches to health and collective care in the context of movement for liberation and social justice.

Each week we will look at particular aspects of health, share ideas and conversation. And each week we’ll explore some simple embodied practices (e.g. massage, stretching, breathing etc.) and learn about herbal medicine together, getting to know some plants by doing group herb tastings (with herbs and practices to take away from each session).

The programme will build week by week and we ask for continuity of attendance and participation.

NB On weeks 2 & 3 two workshops will run in parallel. On those weeks participants can select one workshop to attend, based on their identity.

NB the BIPOC only session - An Introduction to Somatics, the Resilience Toolkit and Liberatory Ways Of Being - is Saturday 15 march 3-5pm @ Clyde Community Hall

& Gender in the Body is Monday 24 March 6-9pm session @ Civic House (wheelchair accessible section)

All sessions will be attended by active listeners: Nosheen Khwaja & Cloudberry MacLean. They will be on hand to offer support to those who might need it, either during or after the workshop. This might be to listen and hear what someone wants to share about their experience at the workshop, to offer brief emotional support if anything comes up at a workshop. Personal matters shared with the active listeners will be held in confidence.

Week One: Monday 10 March In this welcoming first session we will look at the basics of using plant medicine - things you might have in your kitchen or easily to hand. We will introduce preparation methods, contraindications, dosages & remedies for common ailments. (Facilitated by Sapna Agarwal & Lisa Fannen).

Week Two: Saturday 15 March 3 - 5pm @ Clyde Community Hall

An Introduction to Somatics, the Resilience Toolkit and Liberatory Ways Of Being

Camille Sapara Barton (they/she) author of Tending Grief will facilitate this BIPOC only session around somatics and racial justice. More information soon.

Camille Sapara Barton is a writer, consultant, embodiment facilitator and movement artist that supports organisations to flow through transitions. Their work creates relational wellbeing by increasing connection to the body, care practices, grief and imagination. Camille supports teams, as well as individuals, to reduce stress and enhance resilience, while navigating change. They also offer trauma informed facilitation and consultancy to support cultural workers, funders and those working with socially engaged topics. Camille is the author of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community (2024). Based in Amsterdam, they designed and directed MA Ecologies of Transformation (2021 - 2023) which explored how embodiment and socially engaged art making can create change through the body, into the wider world.

BIPOC only - BIPOC = Black, Indigenous, People of Colour. I.e. people of South & East Asian, mixed, Romany, Black and Middle Eastern heritages and Indigenous peoples of Australasia, the Americas, the islands of the Atlantic & the Indian pacific – all of the many different peoples who are the Global Majority.

(If you identify as indigenous and are white please attend the White Resilience workshop).

Week Two: Monday 17 March :

White Resilience: Embodied Anti-Racism
The session - aimed specifically at white people - will be run by Tripod.We will explore and address whiteness, embodiedresponses to racial tension and somatic techniques to build resilience for practicing anti-racist action. It will be a space to learn and transform
together and look at further anti-racist resources and work.

Week Three: Monday 24 March:

We Take Care Of Each Other

Trans-exclusive

This workshop, co-facilitated by River McAskill, River Molloy and Zinzi Buchanan, offers body-focused exercises and creative practices for a trans-exclusive space, situated within the present local and global climate. We will bring an array of offerings related to the question: how can we take care of ourselves and one another, when we can't trust state systems to take care of us? Come as you are and bring anything that adds to your comfort.

River Molloy (he/him) is a holistic and remedial massage therapist and facilitator based in Edinburgh (@RiverflowTherapies).

Zinzi Buchanan is a facilitator, dance artist and death worker training in TCM.

River MacAskill is a massage therapist and writer living in Glasgow.

Week Three: Monday 24 March @ venue TBC

Gender in the Body

For cis gendered people, and to cultivate trans allyship

An introduction to gender and embodiment for cisgender folk (i.e. those whose experience aligns with their assigned gender). This will look at the ways our embodied experiences are shaped by our gender, and explore what it means to support trans siblings in practice. This session will be led by Tripod.

Week Four: Monday 31 March : In this session we’ll explore the use of herbs to support psycho-emotional health*, especially focusing on considering ‘nervines’; herbs that support rest, relaxation, that soothe, ground, vitalise and nourish. We’ll also be looking at personal constitutions and plant energetics. And we’ll briefly touch on the use of entheogens (psychoactive substances such as magic mushrooms) as medicine.

*psycho-emotional health is one way of giving more holistic language to experiences of stress, distress or variable consciousness that often get called ‘mental health’, which will be explored more in the following sessions.

(Facilitated by Sapna Agarwal & Lisa Fannen)

Week Five: Monday 7 April : Mental Health/Moving Beyond. We’ll look at the language and politics of what gets ‘mental health’ and consider more holistic understandings of experiences that honour the connection between mind/body/soul, and that acknowledge social and political context.

(Facilitated by Sapna Agarwal & Lisa Fannen)

Week Six: Monday 14 April : We’ll be looking at decolonising 'global mental health'. We’ll look at the concepts of decoloniality, of things being 'culture bound', and at hermeneutical injustice* as ways to examine dominator knowledge systems, and the institution of psych/iatry.

*Hermeneutical injustice - occurs when someone's experiences are not well understood — by themselves or by others — because these experiences do not fit any concepts known to them (or known to others), due to the historic exclusion of some groups of people from activities, such as scholarship and journalism, that shape the language people use to make sense of their experiences.

(Facilitated by Sapna Agarwal & Lisa Fannen)

Week Seven: Monday 21 April - We’ll be looking at reframing trauma, how we might understand trauma in the bodymindsoul, taking a look at the physiology of trauma, forms of trauma, and at ways to mitigate and heal trauma. (Facilitated by Lisa Fannen & Sapna Agarwal).

Week Eight: Monday 28 April : We’ll look more at psycho-emotional health - exploring experiences as opposed to diagnoses. And exploring collective care and collective healing. (Facilitated by Sapna Agarwal & Lisa Fannen).

Week Nine: Monday 5 May: This closing session will be a space for reflection and feedback. We can discuss ways we can share what we’ve learned and explored with our wider communities. We can talk about if we want to do more sessions and /or projects together. (Facilitated by Lisa Fannen & Sapna Agarwal).

Please note - Re safer approaches to covid & other viral transmission there will be a HEPA air filter in the workshop venue and workshop participants are requested to take a lateral flow before this workshop (either at home or on the spot at the venue, if you don't have access to an at home test).

Access Info:

Clyde Community Hall is a fully wheelchair acessible venue. The area of Civic House (including toilets) we are using is wheelchair accessible .

Local travel costs will be covered for anyone in the immigration system or in receipt of benefits. (No proof needed) (Cash in person on each evening)

Please email Cloudberry at cloudberry@arika.org.uk with any access questions e.g. BSL provision, taxi for those with mobility issues etc.

We have a limited first come, first served budget available for childcare costs. This needs to be prearranged by emailing cloudberry@arika.org.uk

If you would like to take part but something would stand in the way please reach out to see if we can help.

Registrations are closed

In Our Hands Workshop Series