Offering support to ourselves and each other - this can feel like the most radical practice, and can also be the most difficult. What to do? If we want to build community, we have to start with ourselves.

In this workshop with artists and expressive arts therapists Laura and Glynis, we will focus on wellbeing in an activist context and strategies for self- and collective care. We will address the issue of burnout in activist circles and explore how to care for our mental health in light of the unstable times and multiple crises we are going through as a society.

In activist circles (and not only there), we often forget to take care of ourselves and each other. We work ourselves to the bone; we’re too tired and busy to engage in and maintain relationships; in our idealism, we hold ourselves and others to unrealistic expectations; we don’t respect our own boundaries; we have habits which hurt and exhaust us, and we still have the feeling we’re not doing enough. Often, we still come back to the conclusion that no matter how hard we try, somehow we’re still living in the service of the inhumane and impersonal capitalistic system we are trying to change.

Even amidst the complicated and unjust conditions in the world, we want to bring back into our busy lives the self- and mutual support, pleasure and joy in living that are natural to us, the skills of listening to and taking care of our own needs that then fuel our strength to care for others and to continue to work towards peace and justice.

Using somatic exercises, sound, movement, and creative processes / art techniques, we will map where we are in our self-care, bolster our self-awareness about how our bodies and minds respond to the circumstances of our lives and the society around us, and identify our habits. We will experiment with ways of working with ourselves so that we can learn to change some unhelpful tendencies, and together create new possibilities for how to be authentically and responsively ourselves, on our own and together.

Sign up, even if you don't consider yourself to be an activist directly, but are part of a community and need to learn to be more dedicated to *yourself* and not just to others.

Glynis Hull-Rochelle and Laura Henderson are artists and expressive arts therapists who believe in the power of creativity to help people connect to themselves and each other, rethink and refashion ways of being with each other, and to heal. Together they have been running QTY (a social/support program for queer and trans young people aged 13-21) since 2016, and, among other varied projects, established a queer feminist protest choir in 2021.

The event is free of entry. Both in Czech and English language.

Please, reserve your place for participation - send us an email to iu@institutuzkosti.cz.

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The event is organised by the Institute of Anxiety as part of the long-term series QUEERING. AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF POTENTIAL NATURES. The series aims to stimulate inter-disciplinary collaborations to focus on a search for new forms of evolutionary processes, ecological interactions and policies from the perspective of queer and feminist theory.

The project QUEERING. AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF POTENTIAL NATURES is realized with a support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Hall and the State Fund of Culture.