Relational Disobedience Part 5: The Quiet Practices of Disobedience

We don’t only resist through protest or campaigns. Resistance often looks like:

• A nurse leaving an NHS career to rediscover care and cooking.
• A café that opens when it feels ready, not when the market demands.
• A circle of neighbours who light a candle, share a poem, and mend a broken bench.
• A Birmingham garden sprouting in derelict soil.
• A Bristol designer who swaps social media for postcards.
• A hospice nurse who begins each shift in silence.

These are not scalable solutions. They are gestures of fidelity without fanfare. They are the lanterns of the hidden city, lights carried by ordinary people, unnoticed by metrics, but radiant with care.

In this workshop:

• Story - The Lanterns of the Hidden City: A parable of the hidden networks where lanterns of care, attention, and resistance quietly glow.
• Essay - The Quiet Practices of Disobedience: Contemporary case stories of everyday resistance in Rotherham, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Hebden, and London.
• Study Guide: Practices for noticing and joining these hidden networks: making a Hidden Map, Living the Gesture, Recognition Practice, Collecting the Lanterns.

What you’ll gain

• A lens to notice everyday disobedience in your life and community.
• Practical tools to practise lantern-carrying: small, daily acts of fidelity.
• Connection with others committed to resisting without hatred or despair.