Seeking Abundance: What Does Being Resourced Look and Feel Like?
The fourth instalment of the Seeking Abundance series by Promising Trouble - a deep dive into how community tech can help dismantle oppressions and support us all to thrive. Read parts one, two and three and catch up.
This blog post shares insights from a roundtable discussion where we mapped out what it would mean to be resourced as Global Majority practitioners and communities in the sector.
At the end, you’ll find a Glossary of Terms as well as a reflective prompt to support you and your teams in your own journeys exploring what life affirming community tech might mean for you and your communities.
Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias
Recommended tracks to play while you read:
🎵 Self by Cleo Sol
🎵 Atoll by Nai Palm
🎵 Gratitude by Pilani Bubu and AfroNautiq
🎵 Home by Kokoroko
“There is no decolonising without abolition, there’s no decolonising without breaking down systems. And so when we create tech to create the worlds that we want, how is that tool deconstructing, abolishing and breaking down harmful systems? And all of that is to drive us to a space where we can just live peacefully. We just want to get on with things. We don’t want to be constantly under surveillance. We don’t want to be constantly monitored. We don’t want to be constantly monetised and extracted from, we just want to be with our people. So how do we think about that when we talk about community technology, and how does that show up in very practical ways as well?”
Why talk about resourcing?
This blog post explores what came up in a roundtable discussion held in November 2023 with Global Majority (or Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) Tech Justice practitioners around life affirming community tech approaches and sector change. Broadly, we envisioned life affirming community tech as supporting abundance, inspired by nature, regenerative and reciprocal systems, and as fundamentally non extractive of anyone or anything. Baked into our vision for the sector (shared in much more detail in this blog post) were holistic and collective care practices which ensure communities, places, the non-human and the tech we create are cared for, repaired and sustained.
But what does it mean to feel resourced enough to make this more of a reality? In the final section of the roundtable workshop we delved into the crucial theme of resourcing and creating supportive spaces in which our practices, and our communities, could flourish. This was a theme that had come up in the one to ones I’d had with folks throughout 2023 and which had galvanised this meet up - one that sits at the very heart of any changes we want to make in the sector.
Roundtable participants included:
Convened and hosted by: Roseanna Dias, Promising Trouble
Observations and Requests
Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias
Building on our thoughts about what was inspiring us, and what was holding us back or getting in the way of life affirming community tech approaches, this part of our discussion raised questions about current self-care practices, and envisioned additional support for individuals and the collective. Together we addressed the questions: How do we currently resource and take care of ourselves and each other? What more could be done to support us/the vision? Who can support us/be allies? (And what does ‘allyship’ even mean in this context?). These were our observations and requests - presenting real and achievable opportunities for sector support:
Life Affirming Community Spaces
We want spaces to gather - both physically and online. These spaces need to:
Be regular to build continuity and community in our day to day, so that in times of crisis or peak moments, we have community to turn to.
Be facilitated as safe-as-possible spaces, in trauma-informed ways - where we can gather and ‘unmask’ together.
Provide time and space to sit and reflect as individuals and as collectives.
Give opportunities to create, share, hack, reconsider and reclaim tools, ways of working and things that inspire us.
Encourage experimentation, joined up thinking/doing, and solidarity practices.
Be community owned and run. We noted that in an ideal world we wouldn’t have spaces where we need allies.
Support people to attend and take time out of their lives, jobs, caring responsibilities.
“This [workshop] space has been so different to other spaces where we’ve been talking about AI where it’s just fear all over - the machines are coming after us - they’re taking all our jobs. Of course that has to do with the people who now have the tools, which sad to say, people should be frightened of some of those people perhaps. But if you give yourself the time and space, we could think about how I could do this, you know, how I could do something really great, and think about where I want to be, rather than feeling it’s just taking over now and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Money For Experimentation and Community Infrastructure
The lack of funding affects all other foundational issues, like wellbeing and support, that present opportunities for change. Funding needs to:
Include unconditional funds and specific funds to try and experiment and 'fail' (learn).
Invest greater amounts. Currently the system is not fit for purpose nor is it empowering Global Majority folks (and others) to flourish as ‘the money is small. It starts small and stays small’ (Imwen Eke).
Invest towards building infrastructure for solidarity and mutual support over the long term, including funding people to show up to spaces where practice is shared. Low pay and rising costs mean that many in community / inclusion roles find it increasingly difficult to take time from busy schedules to attend regular meetups.
Actively encourage communities to use what they have, for example data, to generate income and share the tools to do this ethically and efficiently.
“From my experience running a community engagement organisation - people aren’t taught there are alternative ways of generating income. I don’t mean you have to become a startup and go immediately for Venture Capitalist funding, but there are alternative ways to make money or utilise some of the assets that we have already, that other people make money from, like data.
We need to share how to leverage existing assets for ourselves, and how to use some of that income as a springboard to generate value that is currently untapped.
Communities aren’t told about those systems. You know, it’s almost like they’re told, here’s a traditional process that you can use that we’ve been using for years and years and years - but actually, there are alternative models and alternative ways.”
Opportunities To Open Up Our Perspectives
We identified that at times we get bogged down in a UK-only view when there is so much happening at a global level. Remembering to look to and connect with those working elsewhere, and not just in the Global North, for solidarity and inspiration helps us to understand and embody the term Global Majority. We also talked about ending the hostile environment in the UK, which affects us and our communities in different ways, draining resources and energy and creating further barriers to supporting all in our communities - it also drives talent and knowledge underground meaning many of us lose out on the important perspectives that people can offer.
Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias
Cellular Habits At Scale
We want to build cultures of exchange and mutual aid - some of this is happening but we all felt there was learning to be done in this area. We talked about the small ways we might practise more solidarity in our work / communities and also reconsider what is already within our DNA - what is present in our heritages which we might tune into and which colonialism/capitalism has masked or hindered? In the workshop I used the phrase ‘cellular habits’ to encapsulate the ideas we were sharing around embodied, tiny, cell-deep changes we wanted to practise. This builds on the concepts of ‘atomic habits’ by James Clear and ‘fractals’ by adrienne maree brown.
An important part of creating cellular habits included having the space and time to test things out and share back with one another. Another part was considering our position as individuals vs those in organisations or in institutional spaces and how this affects how we share: where/when do we feel most comfortable sharing? Nish Doshi talked about how solidarity work might develop into some sort of broader barter based system, across many people, over a long time. This also reflected a framing Dama Sathianathan introduced us to earlier in the workshop drawn from Xiaowei Wang’s, Blockchain Chicken Farmwhich speaks of how ecosystems (and human / tech systems) can be understood to scale across the spectrum of time (rather than users).
“I was thinking very practically about solidarity - like sharing my iZettle card reader, or my audio recording equipment, and that stuff has never been an issue for me. It’s funny how you move into the institutional space and then suddenly you contend with ‘oh, we can or cannot do things’ and I think this speaks to something someone said earlier - about recognising when those kinds of colonial patterns make themselves known in our institutions.”
“We’ve been thinking about resourcing quite a lot at the co-op. We work with a lot of really small grassroot groups who don’t have a lot of resources so they don’t get funded and they can’t pay us to do the work that they need. We’ve been thinking a lot about why we need money. Why is it such a focus for driving our intentions towards decisions that we make as a co-op, and who we decide to work with? And a lot of the time, the money isn’t the point. It’s more the thing that needs to happen and what the barriers are in place, and we just realised that the muscle for solidarity and resource sharing is very weak, and has been intentionally weakened.
We can’t rely on each other to provide the care that we need, as a community, to live the lives that we want - and that’s because of constant pressure that we experience elsewhere that means our time is incredibly limited. We’ve been trailing out skills swaps - the problem is the network is quite small. So we’re thinking of how to expand that so that it’s a whole coalition of groups who are sharing skills, and digital infrastructure, for example.
My question is how do we strengthen the muscle of solidarity and resource sharing between communities so that, whilst we do need money to exist, there are still so many other things that we can access that we might have available to provide to one another.”
Within our conversation, a central tension emerged around money: on the one hand it is absolutely crucial for greater investment in Global Majority work, and at the same time much of our conversation looked to anti-capitalist, anti-money approaches as ways to deepen our resources/resourcing practices. During much of our conversation we advocated for exchange and mutual aid as practical strategies for fostering solidarity, and developing strategies and infrastructure that support this thriving, in spite of and alongside big institutions and funders, and the disparities between for profit and not for profit tech worlds.
In our next and final blog post for this roundtable series, we provide an overview of the key takeaways from this rich discussion and exploration around community tech, Global Majority communities, and how we might seek abundance together.
Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias
Over to you
Whilst this conversation started within a circle of Global Majority folks, it is not contained there - it highlights the ways in which all of us might move towards practices which increase empowerment and solidarity.
This is a shared, sector wide endeavour. Whether you are a community tech practitioner or potential partner or funder, this is an invitation for you to take a few moments to do your own reflections and take action.
Why not start with this prompt? Freewrite, mind map or discuss…
Build Capacity: What could being resourced look and feel like for you and for others?
This prompt forms part of a six step framework for reflection on the topic of life affirming community tech.
We also acknowledge the labour involved in reading this if you are a racialised individual. You can find after care resources by following these links for meditation, ways to rest, and inspirational readings.
What’s Next?
This is the fourth instalment of the Seeking Abundance blog series by Promising Trouble - a deep dive into how community tech can help dismantle oppressions and support us all to thrive. Over the course of 2024 we hope to work with others and continue the discussion. Stay tuned on our socials (X / LinkedIn) where we’ll be posting one Seeking Abundance blog post every week for five weeks, starting with 14th Feb.
Glossary of Terms
Abolition - involves eliminating systems or practices, such as slavery, and envisioning new models for the future. It encompasses practical strategies for liberation and empowerment, fostering the belief that change is possible. Abolition is not only a tool for organisation but also a long-term goal, lived out in our daily lives.
Decolonising - we defined it as the deconstruction of colonial ideologies, practices and systems to address the historical and ongoing impacts of colonialism, imperialism, White supremacy, and Eurocentrism on societies. Our understanding encompassed challenging, dismantling, and replacing harmful structures, rectifying historical injustices, and re-centering Global Majority folks.
Global Majority refers to the demographic majority worldwide of Black peoples, Indigenous peoples, and Peoples of Colour. It helps to highlight the perspectives and experiences of the majority in a world shaped by White supremacy.
Tech Justice - 'Tech Justice is where technology is deployed in anti-oppressive ways. That can mean that technology isn't used against particular communities, or it's not used to make decisions that impact people disproportionately’ as defined by Siana Bangura and team in their Tech Justice research project.
