We are sending love and healing during this time of immense collective trauma, grief, loss impacting us, especially Black folks. We remain grounded in our communities and our commitment to racial justice and demanding Black liberation and joy which has existed way before and way beyond the current moment. The time is to get firmer with our strategies, and remember the ways our communities have resisted, repaired, reimagined, and actualise more liberated ways of existing.
Over the past 10 years, Shake! family have highlighted the importance of using our individual/collective imaginations as organising tools to shake up oppressive systems. We know the conversations we were having 10 years ago are only coming to the mainstream now. We also know whiteness coopts and dilutes our conversations, our language, as a strategic tool to erase our efforts. Now is the time to amplify us. This moment calls for us to write our realities, our histories, our reimagined liberated worlds. The Shake! anthology is a celebration of all that we have collectively contributed to building freer worlds. It is also a chance for us to equip the revolution and “make the revolution irresistible’ (Toni Cade Bambara).
We’re extending our deadline to 31st July 2020 and being as flexible as we can. Urgency is a tool of white supremacy, and right now, we know rest and healing is a priority. If you want to contribute but you’re struggling in any way, please get in touch with us, let us know how we can create capacity for you. We will be sending another update with specific support for black Shake!rs soon.
We hope this post gives some clarity on what you can submit. We would love to receive submissions from Shake!rs on any of the themes below. This can be either
1) anything you worked on during a Shake! course/time which you can submit as it stands or further develop with support from us, or
2) any of your own work that might respond to the themes below, or
3) anything reflecting and responding to the current times.
This can be done in any format: a written piece, poetry, essays, illustrations, photographs, filmed clips, paintings, audio recordings… etc.
Themes / Shake! Courses & events over the past 10 years*:
States of Violence
- Ken Saro-Wiwa/ Stephen Lawrence pilot course, 2010
- Britain on Trial, 2011
- States of Violence, 2015
- Surviving the System, 2016
- Fighting SUS, 2018
Food Justice
- Food Fight, 2015
- Resistance Is Fertile, 2016
Media & Power
- Power Propaganda Perceptions, 2013
- New Narratives, 2014
- Black Words Matter, 2016
- Allied Media Conference, 2016
- On Whose Terms, 2018
Healing Justice & Liberation Practice
- Remembering Reimagining Reparations, 2014
- Head Space, 2014
- Healing the Cuts, 2017
- Movement Medicine, 2017
- Rep the Road, 2018
- Our Prayer is Protest, 2018
* for a reminder of content from these Shake events/ courses, see this doc here.
Submission Process: directly email us at shakeanthology@gmail.com
Sending love and solidarity always.