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   Stuart Taylor on May 25, 2023 at 4:03 pm

   Ancient African Futures: A Decolonial Poetics of Systemic Constellations Practice and Restorative Social Justice

   Current Professional Practice Inventory – Embodying Decolonial Praxis

   Stuart Taylor VF.0 | 25.05.23

   OUTLINE

   At my previous PD 09 meeting in January 2023, it was agreed between my Supervisor (Ornette Clennon) and I that rather than focus on the original chapter schedule we had agreed in autumn 2022, I should create a summary reflective inventory of the ways in which I am embodying the ethos and vision of AAF in my current professional work.
   The following section offers a summary of this work.

   CURRENT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE | OCT 22-MAY 2023

   • Dances With Wisdom: Transcultural & Transformative Coaching | 1:1 Clients (London)

   My work as a Transcultural & Transformative Leadership Coach, providing the Transcultural & Transformative Coaching Cycle (TTCC) to clients is one of the X areas in which my professional practice is commercially driven. In the context of the TTCC, I am explicitly foregrounding my Black identity as part of the distinct and unique selling point of this professional services offer. In my communications with clients I articulate unambiguously the anti-racist and decolonial dimensions of my offer. I work with clients from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. My own positionality as a Black person, creates a clear and unambiguous framing for the approaches that I take, the space I hold and the empathic quality of the relational dynamic between my clients and me.

   Bringing to bear African and Asian diasporic and indigenous wisdom tradition cultural and heritage resources and references, provides a genuinely unique professional development service for clients. Being able to hold the tensions and difficulties, as well as the celebratory and joyous dynamics of working with race, racialisation, racism, white privilege, the histories of European colonialism and contemporary race dynamics, are powerful and sometimes very demanding facets of the work. However, I am well versed in these dynamics through my multiple and longstanding academic, embodied and creative research, professional trainings, contemplative and reflective practices. I am also a member of several professional networks of Black allyship in the psychotherapeutic and Restorative Justice communities. In addition to these memberships I regularly access professional supervision services to support my personal development process as a Coach / Therapist. Being a visibly and unapologetically Black person, in a position of authority and professional expertise in the field of Leadership development, which remains a professional sector that is white dominant, sends a potent message of affirmation and acknowledgement to African / Asian heritage and other racialised diasporic clients, and an unambiguous point of positive difference and politicised engagement for white clients.

   • Black South West Network: Associate Consultant, UnMuseum Curatorium Cultural Heritage Programme. Writing and Facilitation commission (Bristol)

   Working in a professional capacity with Black South West Network (BSWN) has proven to be and remains a personally and professionally significant accomplishment. BSWN is a Bristol based organisation that is Black led. It was established c 15 years ago, initially as a Civil Society and Voluntary Sector Organisation (CSVO) capacity-building organisation. It quickly became a racial justice organisation supporting Black and Minoritised communities, businesses and other organisations to flourish, whilst proactively challenging systemic barriers. Their work includes Voice and agency; Cultural inclusion; Brokering relationships; Research and intelligence and Releasing agency. BSWN works with organisations across the South West of the UK from Swindon in the North, Bournemouth in the East to Penzance in the South.

   My work with BSWN began in a voluntary capacity c 2020 as a member of the Working group of Black Academics, Activists, Artists, Curators, Researchers and Producers, developing and innovating the concept of an original Africentric cultural space that would be a holding space for Black cultural heritage and future creative production, reflecting regional, national and international African diasporic cultures. In 2022, I was commissioned as an Associate Consultant, to write two essays on what had evolved to become known as the UnMuseum Curatorium project and facilitate one of X4 Public Roundtable Events in Bristol as part of the UnMuseum Cultural Heritage Programme in autumn 2022.

   The significance of this opportunity and being part of this particular Black led system is profound. Here was an organisation that was overtly and intentionally pursuing a decolonial agenda in the midst of a city that itself is redolent with the history of British Colonialism and Empire. I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up in coastal South Devon, over 75 miles from Bristol and was forged in a rural culture deeply embedded in Britain’s colonial history. On a personal, creative and professional level, the UnMuseum Curatorium project is significant and resonant as a symbol and site of creative-political decolonial activism. The opportunity to write the introductory and reflective essays, accounting for the thematic areas explored in the Public Roundtables, has afforded me a context in which to deepen and refine my own thinking and writing, informed by international decolonial artists, practitioners, producers, theorists and writers from African, Arabic, Asian, South East Asian, Australasian, North & South American, Persian and Polynesian indigenous and diasporic communities. In 2022, the UnMuseum Curatorium project achieved significant funding for a two-year development and implementation period from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

   • Dances With Wisdom: Innovation, Leadership, Organisational Development & EEDI& B Consulting | NHS North West Leadership Academy (London & Manchester) | Medtronic (London & Nordic region (North West Europe))

   Dances With Wisdom (DWW) is the primary vehicle for my corporate systemic consulting work with organisations and corporations UK-wide and internationally. DWW is also the platform for my TTCC offer. As a Black systemic consultant, I am part of a small community of Black professionals, working independently and at the highest levels of professional practice in the UK. Having cultivated an entrepreneurial career over the last 35+ years, DWW is the defining stage of the third phase of my professional career. DWWs clients range from statutory sector organisations in education, healthcare and the culture, heritage and museum sectors, to civil service organisations and multinational corporate behemoths. Additionally, my TTCC offer, is populated mainly by senior-level figures within commercial organisations or by successful entrepreneurs.

   As the founder and lead consultant within DWW a network-consultancy, it is unquestionably and uncommon circumstance to be leading such a project in the UK as Black man. This distinctiveness is something I am very much minded of and my own political position as a decolonial scholar-activist and artist informs every aspect of the structuring, running and culture of DWW. At least 50% of the business DWW has delivered over the last three years has been focused on Equity, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (EEDIB) learning programmes. The remaining proportion of DWWs work has been in the fields of Innovation and Leadership development. By definition, at an important level the distinction between EEDIB, innovation and leadership development becomes to an extent blurred.

   Working nationally and internationally with larger and smaller businesses and organisations affords me the opportunity to influence, develop and leverage the substantial knowledge, insights and understandings I have cultivated in the field of decolonial, innovation, leadership and systemic practice over the past thirty five+ years of my professional life. Being present in boardroom and senior management team level environments alongside being amidst mid-level management teams, as Black expert in a position of authority is personally exhilarating and liberating. It also carries a deal of emotional labour to hold challenging and sometimes contested spaces for primarily white client groups. Nonetheless, my presence in such influential environments and that of my numerous colleagues from African and Asian diasporic backgrounds is a powerful and concrete illustration of the impact that is being made in regard to anti racist and decolonial movement in the heart of British and international organisational systems. Though slow and often ‘under the radar’ there is progressive change occurring and I am part of this process.

   • Constellation Workshops: Monthly Facilitation & Hosting of Systemic Constellations Practice workshops (London)

   Constellation Workshops (CoWo) is the mainstream context in which I practice Systemic Constellations work, as a member of a four-person team of two ethnically white women and one ethnically white man. Unconventionally, in the field of Constellations Practice, CoWo operates as a team rather than as individual practitioners. Even more unusual is the presence of me, a Black man in a sector that is predominantly (c. 95%) white and female populated. I am keenly aware of the anomalous nature of my presence in the field and within the CoWo team. In the 3+ years that I have been working with CoWo, I think there has only been c 5 occasions when there has been either a Black or Asian client in over forty Constellations with 150+ individuals. This equates to approximately 3% of the client population over this time period.

   At a profound level this is a deeply ironic situation, as Systemic Constellations Practice is for me unquestionably based on the extractive knowledge that the recognised founder of the modality, Anton (Bert) Hellinger, a German national (1925-2019) acquired over the 16 years he was a Jesuit Catholic Missionary Priest in Kwa Zulu South Africa, in the 1950s-1960s. This fact of his being embedded within Zulu communities and populations where he was a school administrator, is at the core of the book I am writing Ancient African Futures: A Decolonial Poetics of Systemic Constellations Practice and Restorative Social Justice (AAF).

   My presence in the professional field of Systemic Constellations Practice is not symbolic, it is phenomenological, empirical and an expression of my ontological groundedness. It is also a harbinger of the inevitable evolution within the professional field, as more individuals from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds – the Global Majority (GMa), move into newer professional spaces. Systemic Constellations Practice is c 45 years old, the profession of Psychotherapy is c 100 years old. There is significant movement within the wider psychotherapeutic profession, in terms of a decolonial critique of the epistemological framework or system of white, European, middle age, middle class, able-bodied, heteronormative orientation of the theoretical models that form the basis of the profession and its historically established clinical practices. Feminist critiques and increasingly, decolonial critiques are generating momentum at a global scale in regard to this pivot and regenerative dynamic. My presence and that of other Black practitioners, specifically in Systemic Constellations Practice and the wider psychotherapeutic field are the indicators that this irreversible trend is in effect. At the time of writing, this trend in professional representation and critical decolonial movement, is not being reflected in the client base I work with at CoWo. This tells me there is a need for an intentional, targeted and sustained effort to engage, recruit and work with a much more culturally diverse community of participant-beneficiaries of this work.

   • St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation & Peace: Trustee & Non-Executive Director (London)

   I am the first Black Trustee at St Ethelburga’s. It took me three attempts to be appointed as a Trustee, even with the organisation explicitly seeking out lived experience and professional expertise in the context of EEDI& B in their at the time, newest Trustee. This phenomenon demonstrates to me that even within a demonstrably liberal, progressive and peace-oriented, purpose-led organisation, there are deep systemic dynamics in play informed by European colonial histories and distinctly British constructions of the philosophy of charitable practice.

   Although the organisation develops and delivers multipole projects focused on peace practices and social justice issues, it is an undeniably white-led organisation. Given that its founding articles and principles are framed within a Christian faith-based framework, there are multiple unexplored, uncontested and insufficiently rigorously examined elements to the organisations culture and professional practices. From my perspective this is most obvious in the fact that none of the paid staff of the organisation are of African heritage; there are a small number of Asian heritage staff, but the overall system is that of a white-led culture.

   As a Trustee it has fallen to me to initiate some formal processes to explore, contest, examine and inquire, into the racial dynamics within the core organisational system and its administrative, managerial and data gathering processes. In so doing I have met with some overt resistance from some of the senior management, in the form of white fragility. Although I am prepared to continue to pursue this decolonial work, as the currently sole Black member of the Trustees and therefore a senior authority figures within the organisation. It is shocking to me, that there is such a level of systemic ignorance and unpreparedness, to meaningfully engage in appropriate anti-racist and decolonial work required, for the organisation to become a beacon organisation within the faith based, peace-making, charitable sector. There is much work to do, and I envisage the next three years will be pivotal in terms of the ways in which the decolonial work underway, really impacts St Ethelburga’s and the multiple charitable, philanthropic and community beneficiary systems it is connected to.

   • Brothers of Kuna Kinte: Founder (London & Bristol)

   Brothers of Kunta Kinte (BKK) is a project that I am very passionate about. It is directly inspired by Gal Dem a Generation Z project initiated in the mid-2010s by Liv Little, a Black Feminist activist and scholar in London, as an online publishing and events platform for Black women of her generation to explore, inquire into, advocate, celebrate and champion Black centric feminist practices.
   Having been a co-instigator, facilitator and producer of Man Dem Community of Practice with the Ubele Initiative in 2021-2022, I was well-versed in the creative, logistical, relational and administrative dynamics of developing a project that focused on the personal development needs of Black men, when I was approached by some male colleagues to be a co-founder of BKK in the late summer of 2022. In the autumn of 2022, as Black Mens Development Group (BMDG), my then four colleagues and I hosted, facilitated and produced a weekend residential retreat in rural Oxfordshire, a series of online gatherings and a social walk n talk event in central London for Black men interested in their holistic personal development.

   It was apparent through my earlier work with Man Dem COP and the initial work with BMDG, on a personal and collective level that there is a significant need for Black men to have a dedicated, focused space for inquiry, communion, creative exploration and healing that is definitively, non-statutory, non-clinical, non-judicial system. A space that clearly and unapologetically champions an authentic, appreciative and empathetic reception to Black men and their psychological, emotional, creative, physical, financial, relational and identify development needs.

   In early 2022 at one of our BMDG planning meetings, we decided to change our name to something that was more overtly audacious, striking and memorable, with a clear political and cultural resonance, hence Brothers of Kunta Kinte. BKK makes deliberate reference to Alex Hayley’s seminal 1970s book Roots. Kunta Kinte is a key character in the narrative and is an enslaved African transported to North America. He demonstrates a clear, unambiguous pride in his African identity and culture and courageous defiance and rebelliousness in the face of the gross violence and injustices he suffers and witnesses at the hands of white slavers who he is brutally assaulted by.
   The dynamic energetic spark generated by the name change in January of 2023, refocused, galvanised and animated the now three men strong core group within BKK. In the early spring of 2023, BKK received modest funding to create a participatory workshop offer for younger Black men (15-25 years) in Bristol focused on: Activism | Resilience | Wellbeing & Joy. I see BKK as a distinct and significant strand of my Decolonial Scholar-Activism and am ambitious for the futurity of the project, continuing to draw inspiration from the amazing eight-year light generated by Gal Dem (2014-2022). In an era of overtly hostile right wing-leaning mainstream politics and ongoing abuses against Black people economically, existentially and physically, I have no doubt about the need and opportunity for BKK as a meaningful and necessary vehicle for activism, creative inquiry, political education, healing, solidarity and regenerative hope.

   • African As Future: Summertide Seminary | Consultant-Facilitator (Bristol)

   My engagement and participation in African As Future: Summertide Seminary (AAFSS) came about by way of invitation from Cleo Lake, Artist, Activist and former Lord Mayor of Bristol. I have become acquainted with Cleo since c 2021, as a fellow member of the Working Group supporting BSWN, in the development of the UnMuseum Curatorium project. As an established artist and activist in the city, Cleo has developed an Africentric model for a Summer school, where all the artists, facilitators and creative contributors to the project are of African heritage. The theme of AAFSS is on healing, restorative practices and celebrating African diaspora cultures and identities.
   I will be contributing two participatory introductory workshops, on Systemic Constellations Practice for members of Bristol’s Black communities and other interested community members. I won’t be facilitating issue-based Systemic Constellations over the two half-day workshops. I will be introducing participants to the history (European colonialism in Africa, specifically the Catholic Jesuit Mission in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa), political (20th century German colonialism in South West Africa i.e. Namibia and Zimbabwe), cultural (the advent of experimental Humanistic Psychotherapeutic models in mid-20th century) and economic context (a predominantly white Euro-American male-dominated leadership, white Euro-American female-dominated practitioner / participant community) culture of Systemic Constellations Practice and some of the range of practical exercises and rituals that constitute Systemic Constellations Practice as a distinct psychotherapeutic modality. At a level, this contribution to AAFSS is a performed rehearsal of Ancient African Futures, my book project with MaSSP / Palgrave Macmillan. AAFSS, presents me with the opportunity to not only ‘road test’ my particular focus of decolonial scholar-activism with a non-specialist lay audience, but also to model a decolonial approach to cultural-political activism.

   The modelling of a decolonial approach to cultural-political activism will take the form of collaborations with two female colleagues. Georgina Parke is a Black British Solicitor, Gestalt Psychotherapist and African Heritage Ancestral Healing Practitioner. Cathy LeCointe is a Black British Psychosynthesis Psychotherapist, Activist and Conflict Resolution Practitioner. I have invited Georgina and Cathy to contribution sessions focused on their practice orientation within my sessions over the two days I am presenting at the AAFSS. For me, there is a direct correlation and resonance between my work with Systemic Constellations Practice, their work in African Heritage Ancestral Healing and Conflict Resolution practices, that makes explicit this correlation and healing-centred, regenerative culturally specific dynamic. Our collaborating together models a form of relational equity and empathy that transcends the violence of neocolonialism and foregrounds a feminist, healing-centred, regenerative, Black pleasure, joyfulness and critically informed creative ontology.

   • The Knowing Field: Interview with Editor & Publisher Barbara Morgan (London / Stroud)

   For almost twenty years up till 2023, The Knowing Field (TKF) was the sole English language professional Journal in the world that was dedicated to exploring the dynamic unfolding of the emergent psychotherapeutic modality of Systemic Constellations Practice. Barbara Morgan has been its Editor and Publisher for almost all of its publication with two editions per year. As the only Journal of its kind, TKF has been a singular platform and conduit for the global community of Systemic Constellations Practitioners to discover, explore, argue, debate and create a culture and epistemology specific to Constellations Practice.

   I first met Barbara Morgan in early 2019, in the context of becoming a member of a working group of senior British Systemic Constellations Practitioners that became known as Decol.Hub/Ldn (DHL). DHL came into being as a result of an international conference the other members of the group (all white British) had convened in Bristol in the summer of 2018 called Colonialism and its Aftermath. The two-day conference drew around 75 people, with c 25 of them travelling internationally to attend. Some efforts were made by the organising group to engage with and include members of Bristol’s Black activist community.

   Over the three+ years that I worked alongside Barbara and other colleagues in DHL, which came about as an inquiry project to explore how decolonial practices could inform current Systemic Constellations Practice and future professional trainings, we became colleagues. DHL was not a comfortable or ‘cosy’ dynamic space. I was initially the sole Black member of the group; subsequently there were three other Black members of the group, an established Art Psychotherapist, a Local Councillor and Public Health professional and a trainee Systemic Constellations Practitioner. Over three years there was a great deal of dialogue and a number of practical actions, invitations extended into the global Systemic Constellations Practice community through TKF, grant bids to philanthropic sources and Constellations-oriented exercises we undertook. Ultimately DHL ran its course, as the wider field and the specific events prior to and following the murder of George Floyd in North America in 2020, reenergising the Black Lives Matter movement came about. In early 2022, we disbanded DHL.
   Late in 2022, Barbara Morgan announced that she was going to stop being editor and publisher of TKF. As a woman in her 70s, a mother and grandmother, the proprietor of a successful professional training organisation for Systemic Constellations Practitioners and a person in demand internationally as a Trainer, Speaker and Supervisor, Barbara Morgan is a busy women with a uniquely global perspective on the development of Systemic Constellations Practice and its evolution over the past forty years. She was intimately acquainted over c 30 years with Bert Hellinger the founder of Systemic Constellations Work.

   In learning about Barbara’s intention to cease publishing TKF, I saw a creative opportunity to deepen the relationship between Barbara and I, insert myself into the firmament of internationally recognised Systemic Constellations Practitioners and in some way be a visible vanguard for Black Practitioners. I suggested to Barbara that we do an open ended exploratory reflective interview together. If she was happy with the resultant content, she would then publish it in the final edition of TKF in early 2023. This came to pass. In the final edition of TKF, the first four names in the contents page are as follows: Barbara Morgan, Bert Hellinger, Stuart Taylor, Paul Stoney. For the first time ever, in the history of TKF and in its final edition there is Black Systemic Constellations Practitioner firmly in the company of the Journals renowned editor and publisher, the founder of the modality and the Chair of the International Systemic Constellations Association.

   In the body of the Journal Barbara has published an extensive 11-page interview with me as transcribed by me, from our original audio-recorded interview in late 2022. The interview spans her discovering Bert Hellinger and the field of Systemic Constellations Practice, coming to it as a Gestalt Psychotherapist and her subsequent career as an editor, publisher, trainer and supervisor over a c thirty years span. Throughout which she was at the centre of developments and amongst key and pivotal personalities that have shaped the professional field. This is a significant event on a personal level professionally, but more importantly symbolically. The symbolic significance of the interview in the Journal is that it places a Black practitioner in a position of authority and centrality in the international landscape of Systemic Constellations Practice. Moreover, it is a further harbinger of the inevitable diversification of the profession, as more individuals from African, Asian, South East Asian, Arabic, Persian, Latin American, Native American, Maori, Aboriginal Australian, Polynesian and other indigenous, racialised or mionritised identity groups and communities become practitioners. This is a slowly accelerating trend of decolonisation in the profession and the wider Psychotherapeutic field. Personally, I see this particular intervention as another expression of my being a decolonial scholar-activist.

   • KITA Decolonial Healing Circles | Online / international (London & Sardinia)

   During 2020-21 I participated in an international learning programme coordinated by Thomas Hubl’s team. Thomas Hubl is an Austrian practitioner and thought leader renowned for his work on Collective Trauma. The programme I participated in was called European Colonialism in Africa. The stated purpose of the programme was to inquire into and seek to begin to address some of the extensive and profound trauma that has been caused historically, by European colonial projects on the African continent, and the subsequent harms caused by the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the horrific violence and genocides of colonial occupation, epistemicide, extractive material exploitation and the resultant cultural, economic and social injustices of the modern and contemporary eras. This was a huge and retrospectively naïve undertaking, that showed some measure of hubris and European exceptionalism in thinking it would be possible to address these deep, historical issues within the framework and orientation of the programme.

   Very early in the course of the programme which was facilitated by a white South African woman, a white British man, both of whom were Hubl organisation ‘insiders’ and a Black Namibian woman and Black Zimbabwean man; neither of whom were ‘Hubl organisation insiders’, it became apparent there was a fundamental design flaw and systemic imbalance within the distribution of authority between the four facilitators. Simply put from a technical, communications, leadership and content orientation perspective, the white Hubl team members were literally privileged and assumed a position of superiority over their two sub-Saharan African colleagues.

   As one of the minority Black members of the international cohort of learners, I was with my Black colleagues, assertively vocal about the power imbalance, the discrepancy in technical equity for the Black facilitators and the overall orientation and positioning of the course design itself. Suffice to say the whole programme was in itself a traumatising and disturbing encounter with the ongoing, deeply embedded white European exceptionalism, that is the core of contemporary neocolonial ideology and cultures. This was a distressing and shocking experience over some nine months.

   After over a year of almost no contact with Black colleagues form the programme, I responded to a call-out from one of my female colleagues, an East African-German woman, who is now based in Sardinia, that was looking to revisit the experience we had shared in order to make sense of the process we had undergone. I responded to her and we subsequently collaborated, to host and facilitate a short series of online gatherings open to other graduates of the Hubl programme we had participated in, of whatever cultural or ethnic background that felt drawn to revisit the experience.

   The outcome of the Open Space sessions we co-facilitated, was that there was a deep sense of residual trauma, incompleteness and inappropriateness in the overall design of the original Hubl organisation programme and the way it had been managed. Concurrently, there was also a strongly expressed appreciation from the international participants in our sessions, for the ways in which my colleague and I, framed, held and facilitated the context of the sessions and the exchanges and dialogue that arose through them. Subsequently, my colleague and I have decided to formally develop a learning process we are calling KITA Decolonial Healing Circles (KITA DHC). The KITA DHC will become a formal dialogue-based process to facilitate exchange, inquiry and learning, in regard to historical European colonialism and the ramifications of this phenomenon in the neocolonial world we experience in the contemporary era. Moreover, the focus of the KITA DHC, will be explicitly healing-centred, as a means to provide processes, resources and a space whereby participants in the programme(s) gain sustainable resourcing to convene, facilitate or lead their own programmes in the future if they so choose.

   • Wounded Healers (Angel Acosta) | UK Consultant-Producer (New York, USA & London)

   In 2021, through connections I forged with other Black participants in the Hubl programme, I was introduced to the work of African American Scholar-Activist, Angel Acosta. Angel Acosta is an academic, consultant and practice leader in the field of Education and learning. Through his Doctoral studies, he has developed a Contemplative science and Healing-centred ethos and practice model. This is radical in that it centres the experience of Black and indigenous people, with a clear focus on contemplative practices, inspired by Buddhist and Indigenous wisdom traditions from Africa and the America’s. Since 2021, I have participated in a number of his programmes and through this developed a direct personal relationship and correspondence with him. Over the course of 2022, Acosta launched a new strand in his work called Wounded Healers. Wounded Healers is a Portrait and Podcast series featuring nine Black, Latina and indigenous activists from North America

   “…This portrait series captures the profiles of nine educators, community leaders and practitioners, all of whom have dedicated their lives to -in some shape or form- creating spaces for others to thrive, flourish and heal. We call them the Wounded Healers.

   The concept of “wounded healers” finds its roots in both Carl Jung’s work and Greek mythology. For Jung, the wounded healer represented the sensitivity and understanding of ones’ own wounds and how this informs helping others heal…”

   Through the course of our dialogue in late 2022, Acosta has invited me to become a Consultant-Producer, in developing the Wounded Healers project in the UK. This is a deeply humbling and significant honour on a personal and professional level.

   • BLAK C.O.R.E.: Artist / Consultant (London & Melbourne, Australia)

   Through a simple twist of fate during mid-2022, in a conversation with a Black artist colleague here in London, I learned he was working with an indigenous Australian contemporary artist. This contemporary artist turned out to be Brook Garru Andrew. Brook Garru Andrew has become over the past twenty-five years, one of Australia’s most highly successful and regarded international contemporary artists. He is now Enterprise Professor, Interdisciplinary Practice, The Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, Melbourne University, where he leads a project called BLAK C.O.R.E. (Care Of Radical Energy) BLAK C.O.R.E.’s ethos is

   “…a collective driven by First Nations methodologies, research and cultural practices focusing on walumarra (protection) yindyamarra (ongoing respect) and murungidyal (healing)…”

   BLAK C.O.R.E. is significant in itself as one of the few Indigenous-led academic-creative projects of its kind in Australia. It is significant to me personally and my creative, scholar-activist practice because in the early 1990s, I was the Director of a Media Art Gallery in Bath, UK. The most significant project I oversaw was an international collaboration between Boomalli Aborignal Artists Coop, FstopMediaStation, the Gallery I ran, Watershed Bristol, Exeter University, Exeter City Museum and Spacex Gallery. One of the four artists involved in the project at that time was Brook Garru Andrew. We became immediate friends and shared in the novelty and joy of my being one of very few Black Artist-Directors of a contemporary gallery space at that time and the opportunity for him and fellow indigenous artist Rey Saunders ot be travelling to Europe to promote their work.

   To reconnect directly with Brook, in London in 2022, as he was completing some production work on a new film project opening in Berlin that September, was amazing. The opportunity to ‘bridge’ 25 years of life between us was incredible. A consequence of our reconnection is that we are now in a dialogue about my being connected to the work of BLAK C.O.R.E. These growing international personal connections, from Sardinia to North America, to Australia, illustrate unambiguously, the scope of the decolonial project in its international and multidimensional edges. They demonstrate too, my own contribution and engagement in this unfolding progressive cultural-economic-political movement.

   • Black Restorative Network: Core Group Founding Member (London)

   In the autumn of 2022, I attended the inaugural public event of the newly formed Black Restorative Network (BRN). The BRN is a professional network for Black professionals working in the field(s) conflict resolution and restorative justice. As it stands there has never been a network for Black professionals working in these sectors. Within the UK criminal justice, education and mental health sectors, there is a staggeringly disproportionate number of (predominantly) male Black, racialised or mionritised individuals within those populations. There are multiple dimensions to grapple with, address and resolve towards a more palpably just settlement, that acknowledges and honours this longstanding social injustice, which remains another illustration of the physical and social ramifications of neocolonialism.

   My engagement with the BRN is as a member of the core organising group. The group is tasked with the strategic development, management and practical running of the BRN, as it seeks to establish itself as a meaningful, well resourced and influential professional body. Given the diverse numbers of Black professionals working specifically in the restorative justice and conflict resolution sectors, there is a longstanding need for such a professional grouping to bring to bear informed, sensitive and assertive representation and lobbying power to the national community of professionals in these and related sectors. My contribution in this context is for me a further practical and concrete expression of my decolonial scholar-activism.

   • Weathering the Storm: Stories of Love, Life, Loss and Discovery in the time of Covid. Ed. Liz
   Rothschild. Anthology contributor (Alpha:Omega | Eulogica). Publisher, PCCS Books (UK)

   In 2020 my mother died. During the same year, Liz Rothschild published her first book, an anthology titled Outside the Box. I was fortunate enough to attend the online launch for the book. I was deeply impressed by the anthology and the creative, respectful, irreverent and transparent ways the assembled authors had articulated their experiences around the loss of a loved one.

   In 2022, I was contacted by Liz Rothschild after she made a call-out for Black writers to contribute to a second anthology, exploring the experience of Black and racially mionritised communities in regard to their experience of death and loss in the time of Covid. As a result of our dialogue, I have now been published in the second anthology called: Weathering the Storm: Stories of Love, Life, Loss and Discovery in the Time of Covid. PCCS Books (2023). Although this publishing opportunity / achievement is not directly or overtly about decolonisation or issues related to race, I feel it is an important act of visibility in the wider publishing landscape and an act of freedom, to not be writing exclusively about race, racialisation or neocolonial dynamics or politics.

   • Black Equity Organisation: Mapping UK Activist Needs | Consultant (London)

   Black Equity Organisation (BEO) has been established in the UK as an organisation with the explicit purpose of being an anti-racist force working against racial injustice in the UK from the perspective of Black British communities. It aims to work across multiple thematic areas of lobbying, to generate movement and institutional change at the highest levels of UK civil and institutional society.

   During January / February of this year BEO was engaged in a brief engagement process with Black activists across the UK, to establish from them directly, the kinds of activism they were involved in and the ways in which BEO could best resource and support them. As a Black activist I participated in this process as a way of developing a connection with BEO, and also as a way of ensuring there were multigenerational voices involved in their consultation process. It is my hope that I will develop this initial contact with the organisation and find ways to either gain material support, commissioning or collaborative opportunities with them going forward, particularly in the context of my work with Brothers of Kunta Kinte.

   • The Nature Constellations Handbook: An Invitation to Connection: Remembering Nature in Systems. Francesca Mason Boring. Anthology contributor. All My Relations Press (USA). (2022)

   Francesca Mason Boring is one of North America’s most prominent practitioners, trainers and writers in the field of Systemic Constellations Practice. Her work is international in its scope, and she is highly regarded by the international practitioner community. For many years she was an advisor for The Knowing Field. As a mixed heritage Native American-white American, Francesca holds a particularly resonant position for me personally, in the professional field of Systemic Constellations Practice. In the course of preparing my own book AAF, I was required to produce a chapter outline as part of the submission process. Another aspect of this process was to request feedback on the viability, focus and proposed contents of the book from appropriate experts in my professional field. One of the experts I approached was Francesca. She generously accepted my request and subsequently wrote a positive response to the publishers regarding AAF.

   An entirely unforeseen outcome of this process for me was that Francesca asked me to contribute to her most recent book i.e. The Nature Constellations Handbook. As of 2022, I have now become included in a book by one of the Systemic Constellations Practice international community’s most highly regarded practitioner-writers. This is a great honour and I am duly humbled. At the same time I acknowledge Francesca’s grace and embodied solidarity in inviting me to be included in her book. There are so few Black and Indigenous practitioners in positions of authority or visibility within the sector, that it is a heartening act on her behalf to make space for me to be seen and my writing valued.

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