Big Beef & Beyond — transformative approaches to tending to harm in our communities

Is it a disagreement, conflict or abuse? Is this punishment, or are those consequences? How do we hold slippery terms like ‘accountability’ to account and resist their weaponisation and capture, moving away from disposability culture whilst staying rooted in our values? What structures and shared lenses can help us navigate difficult interpersonal situations in more discerning, caring and less destructive ways? We’ll critically address the current ways these tough topics are thought about in our spaces, movements and groups, explore the differences between hurt, harm, conflict and abuse, as well as useful models, protocols and mindsets for navigating and addressing different types of dynamics. This is a four-part workshop, and each session builds on the previous sessions. The sessions will be interactive and conversation-based, with handouts and a digital drive of further reading and resources for everyone who takes part. In session one, we will deep dive into the mechanics and dynamics typical of many so-called conflicts. We’ll explore what happens in our (collective) bodies when harm happens, and talk about some tools for dealing with these dynamics that strive to break rather than reinforce the very systems of violence and punishment that we are often organising against. In sessions two and three, we will look in more detail at some practical structures and skills needed for moving through the discomfort, pain and dislocation that can come up when harm happens. We’ll get a bit more specific about dealing with situations "beyond" conflict — harm and abuse — and start to explore some of the possible frameworks for community accountability processes for groups who work together over time. We’ll go deeper with some of the frameworks we’ve introduced, using practice scenarios to apply, play with and question the frameworks offered from the first two sessions. For the last session, we’ll workshop some real-life (optionally anonymised) situations from some of the workshop participants, aiming to get/give active feedback from the group on past or active situations, applying the learnings from the previous sessions to take back to their contexts. All sessions are co-designed and co-facilitated sensitively by very experienced trainers and aim to equip participants with an experience-based set of tools for supporting stronger, safer communities.