Director’s Update: Plans for 2021
Blessings family,
To every single person that has supported the Free Black University up to this point, we truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The vision is big, it is bold, and it is unapologetic, and in every move we make with this work, we will continue to hold this energy and power. We are committed to radical study and healing as a route to collective liberation and are designing a platform that challenges the deep seated ills of the Western academy to develop an anti-colonial, queer and Black location of free, community-centred education. We are creating a space that we intend to outlive every single one of us. With this, the foundational work we are doing at this point is critical to setting the roots for a project that can offer all that we intend for it to, for this generation and so many more.
I have been reflecting on what it means to be an effective organiser, an effective builder and collaborator of new worlds. For inspiration and guidance, I look to nature to consider the ways growth and wisdom are born in these spaces. When a seed is planted it goes through a long period of darkness under the soil before we even see it sprout, let alone years before we can start bearing the fruits of that first seed we sowed. Social justice work is no different, when we allow the tree to grow its roots deep down into the darkness of the soil, and trust that it will sprout when it is ready to do so, we have trees that stand strong in their wisdom and beauty for hundreds and hundreds of years – even thousands.
We have always referred to the Free Black University as a seed, a seed that we are deeply committed to tending to to ensure it can grow and serve the community in the most far reaching and radical way. So, we have made the decision to take some time offline to focus solely on strategy, restructuring, securing long-term funding, our governance structure, our legal requirements, and employment. The money raised thus far will support us in meeting the costs of this internal work as well as some exciting projects and campaigns that we are currently planning, including plans to source the Black community with radical reading material, the launch of our upcoming journal, and the commission of our inaugural lecture series.
So, in this time, we are asking you all for the grace, patience, and trust to allow us to settle the roots of this organisation deep down in the soil. We place intentionality and longevity above the need to produce, as focussing on the latter we may dwindle before we have the impact we know we can have. We want to create an organisation that is radical in its output as well as radical in the way we work. As a team of people who experience marginalisation in our everyday lives, working in a fashion that is considerate, caring, centres rest, and love is something we aim to do and maintain. This period of quiet, and capacity building, is central to this.
We will therefore be coming offline for a while - our pages will stay open, but we will not be posting nor monitoring them - other than the occasional update.
We see that many of you are still eager to donate to our cause so we will keep the gofundme open for a little longer, these donations are continuing to be vital in allowing us to really broaden and strengthen the vision we hold. All of our energy will look inwards, what we want to create is something we have never seen done before. It takes a great deal of physical, intellectual, and spiritual labour to birth the vision that we hold. There are no quick fixes to systemic inequalities in society, and to create an organisation that will produce knowledge that cuts through the epistemic veil that sits across a world built upon the foundations of white supremacy (also known as Enlightenment thought), is no easy feat. However, we are committed to this work, education will be radicalised and accessible to all. To ensure we do this to the absolute best of our ability we will be taking our time and re-launching in due course.
During our period of quiet an urgent aspect of our 10 point plan that we want to tend to is the UK Black PhD Student Network. PhDs are already some of the most challenging and isolating experiences of higher education, especially for Black students, and the global pandemic only intensifies this. Therefore, we will be beginning our UK Black PhD Network to bring together Black doctoral students from across the UK to community build, share visions, and collaborate. We will be holding the first session of this in early 2021 which will be an informal meet-up and check-in after which we will collaboratively develop more structured meet-ups and collective writing sessions. If you’re a Black person currently taking up a PhD at a U.K. university, or if you are a Black person who has lived in the UK but is now undertaking doctoral study abroad please come and join us to community build. You can sign up here to be added to the mailing list. We look forward to meeting you all!
That’s it from me folks. I hope that everyone is able to take time for rest and quiet in these winter months. The past year was not kind to many, and it is important that we, especially Black folks, hold the time for ourselves and our community to process and heal the wounds that 2020 has laid bare. Love up on yourself. Love up on your community. We are all people committed to liberation across the globe, shaping new worlds. The only truth I know of 2021 is that change will occur, and we hope to be shoulder to shoulder shaping the new worlds of liberation with you all. As Octavia Butler, our oracle and guiding light puts it, “the only lasting truth is change” ~ Parable of the Sower. It is on us all to shape what that change looks and feels like. So the question I want to leave you all with is how can you further commit to believing that the deepest sense of societal change is possible, that worlds that look and feel nothing like this one exist beyond the pale, that We, You and I, are the people that create this new world?
Love and blessings all,
Melz Owusu and the Free Black University Team