Towards Mutual Struggle – Developing an Intersectional Practice in the Workplace

with Nicole Angela Pearson

🗓 Date: March 21, 2024
🕒 Time: 3–6pm
📍 Location: BIWOC*Rising
🗣 Language: English spoken language
free entry, this workshop is designed for BIWoC and TINBIPoC

The term “intersectionality” has become a bit of a buzzword – but what does it mean in practice? What does it mean in the context of work life?

We live within a system that organises us into hierarchies of power based on various physical, geographical, and socioeconomic factors. These hierarchies are embedded in all of our institutions – including the workplace. Meanwhile, our bodies are the site for sensation that the mind interprets. They are the site for our relationship with ourselves, to each other, and our engagement with the world. Our body is the key to our healing and understanding. In this workshop, we will connect to and explore the charged emotions our ancestors trigger to reveal our silenced histories and explore our relationship to them. We explore how we unconsciously engage in these power dynamics, how our bodies reinforce and replicate them, to deepen our understanding of our positioning within these hierarchies. Using our ancestral lineage, we learn to map the terrain of power and vulnerabilities that we carry and express, to identify how we uphold the institutions and structures that we seek to dismantle.

We begin to connect to our ancestors through embodied practice, working with and through the emotions that come up in that process. We will learn the basics of embodied practice, connecting to our bodies through breath and movement, to engage in joyful self and group expression. From that connection, we practise locating and identifying bodily sensations and exploring the interaction between our physical, intellectual, and emotional selves.

In this way, we get a clearer picture of who we are and what we carry. We begin to see how our presence impacts the spaces we inhabit and the people we encounter. As we bear witness to the challenges we face we begin to see how our individual struggles are part of a collective desire for liberation. This practice creates possibilities for mutual struggle that prioritises care of the most vulnerable and resists narratives that pit us against each other. We do this to develop an intersectional practice necessary for our collective freedom.

Nicole Angela Pearson (she/her/they) is a theatre artist, writer, and activist of African descent. Her work centres on reverberations of trans-Atlantic enslavement across space and time. She focuses on liberatory, intersectional practices, and intergenerational healing. She uses theatre to ignite the imagination of historically marginalised communities such as LGBTIQIA+ youth and racialised communities, facilitating transformative experiences to inspire action.

To reserve your spot, please send an e-mail to Nine: ny@biwoc-rising.org (places are limited)

Nicole Pearson on Instagram