Learning to Unlearn
How do we move to a space of genuine collaboration that allows new ways of thinking and being to emerge?
We know that the experience of collaboration around creating shared meaning and learning reduces fear and prejudice, and moves us into relation with one another. Over the years, we have found that this process can feel really uncomfortable, and people sometimes respond to it by disengaging or moving back into the familiar, defending who they are because it makes them feel safe, and because it’s what they know. We tend to search for binaries (good, bad, right, wrong) to stave off and short-cut fear; the things that tell us we have control, because once we are in ambiguity, we experience fear and threats to our ways of being. So how do we move past that? That’s what AWAKEN is about, it is about helping people gain the tools and experience to tap into awareness around what is happening to them—understanding that their biology and socialization are owning their responses to the world around them in ways they don’t have to.
Without this groundwork, we learnt that we cannot grow the things we need to, within our education system, our human rights organizing, or in environmental protection. It is essential in order for us to foster meaningful and lasting change.
Creating a community of inquiry, learning and practice
AWAKEN would never have been possible without our community of external collaborators, who include local activists, artists, architects, academics, researchers and other creatives who are just as passionate as we are about exploring how we can emerge as a more resilient and connected society. In 2022, we decided to take a step further into this collaboration and create the AWAKEN Community of Practice (CoP). Launched through a public event at the Gulf University of Science and Technology, the CoP is a space for intimacy, self-discovery, and uncomfortable yet transformative conversations with an amazing collective of practitioners who now drive all the work we do as part of AWAKEN.
AWAKEN in the Desert
AWAKEN in the Desert was the culmination of our first year as a Community of Practice. We started by hosting small focus groups with our members, followed by a two-day retreat, designed to gain a deeper understanding of our collective relationship with Kuwait in the form of our lived experiences, narratives and memories. These shared explorations played a crucial role in showcasing the intricacies of our sense of space, our sense of self and our sense of otherness, and they led to the co-design of our public event of the year, which took place in November 2022. Approximately 150 participants from diverse communities joined us for a day of playful yet deep connection and reflection. Activities Included:
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Designed and facilitated by Khadija Rangwala. The activity was about getting participants to share a typical Bohra meal in a circle with strangers while learning about Bohra traditions and culinary customs.
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Designed and facilitated by Rania al Nakib and Ayesha Kamal. The activity was about creating a net of thread between strangers based on the verbal expression of experiences, anecdotes, traits of character and personal preferences that the participants had in common. The intention was to showcase the power of human connection that resides in sharing our lived experiences with others.
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Designed and facilitated by Yasmeen Shehadeh. The activity was about the personal exploration of the emotional landscapes of the participants through painting and drawing on a collective canvas. The debrief included a moment to share the meaning of each participant’s paintings (and the emotions behind them) with the rest of the group.
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Designed and facilitated by Israt Miah. The activity was about creating a collaborative singing dynamic by linking the last verses of songs sung by other participants with the occurrence of new songs. The intention was to showcase the potential for collaboration and co-creation that resides in musical creativity.
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Designed and facilitated by Areej Saleh. The activity was about creating a reflective space for the participants to tap into a personal emotion and then express it through poetry or art. The debrief included a moment to share the meaning of each participant’s art or poem with the rest of the group.
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Designed and facilitated by Yasmeen Al Abduljader. The activity was about engaging the participants in breathing exercises and breathing techniques for emotional release and then holding space for a collective conversation about the experience.
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Designed and facilitated by Amani Al Murjan and Alaa Nasr. The activity consisted of a card game where participants would pair up with someone they had never met before and ask each other deep and meaningful questions.
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Designed and facilitated by Eleanor Burton. The activity was about asking all of the participants of the event to create two long lines facing each other and then asking them to tell the person in front of them (who changed at each asking turn) a different type of story about their lives, based on the prompts given by the facilitator.
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Designed and facilitated by Eleanor Burton. The activity was about giving each participant a list of things that they would have to find within the premises of the event, but instead of consisting of objects, the list consisted of people who had certain features, abilities, or experiences (for example, ‘find a person who speaks 5 languages’). The purpose of the activity was to encourage the participants to go around asking other attendees questions and allowing them to connect.
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Designed by Sara Al Qaoud and facilitated by Fatemah Ashkanani. The activity was about asking the participants to improvise theater scenes based on scripts invented on spot by other participants.
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Designed and facilitated by Taiba Pattan. The activity was about the creation of a textile collective art piece elaborated by stitching together individual pieces of fabric which were previously decorated by the participants as a reflection of their inner emotional world.
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Designed by Mohammed Salih. The activity consisted of a collaborative music performance by musicians from different cultural origins.
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Designed by Carina Maceira and facilitated in collaboration with the volunteers of her organization, Trash Tag. The activity was about collectively cooking a soup with all the vegetables brought by the event attendees as a form of contribution. The soup was offered to all participants at the end of the event when they all gathered around the bonfire to listen to the music performance.
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Designed and facilitated by Batul Sadliwala and Meg Reamy. The activity was about giving the participants some extracts of the stories collected during the AWAKEN Neighborhood Tales for them to read out loud and find ways to link them with their own personal lockdown experiences.
