Overview 
In attempts to bring change to a complex system, activists and those who work for alternatives face oppression, exhaustion and isolation. To sustain our efforts, we need to find sources of empowerment and nourishment that allow us to continue doing our work.  
But what keeps us together? What makes us continuously show up for each other?  

We think community is a central notion. Community is another way to understand, organise society, and to live life - an alternative to ‘individualistic society’. Communities can support and strengthen the individual by creating relationships that promote collective action and social change, allowing them to deviate from the hegemonic model of capitalist patriarchy.

With this course, we wish to create a brave space to come together in community, hold each other in care, and work on core questions like: 

 • How can the way we live/be more coherent with the world we want to create? 
 • How are our own intimate questions around grief, gratitude, power, meaning, love and sexuality linked with our politics? 
 • How are we ourselves perpetuating the very dynamics we seek to interrupt? 

We believe the success of our social movements relies not only on efficient mobilization and strategy, but also on resilient communities grounded in deep relationships. As adrienne maree brown suggests, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” With this course, we aim to turn ourselves into laboratories of transformation and experiment with inner shifts as seeds of new possibility for the struggles and contexts we’re part of.  

In this course, we aim not only to create a shared space for knowledge and experience but also to develop practical tools and frameworks that you can apply within your activist and community groups. 

Course Content & Structure 
We offer a range of workshops, seminars, sharing circles, group and ceremonial practices. Our educational approaches will center around experiential learning, relationality and embodiment, with an aim to build the communities we are envisioning within the spaces of this course.

We also go in with the belief that we have a lot of collective knowledge and experience and that this can’t just be carried out by 1 or 2 people but by the whole community.  

The course consists of 8 weekly sessions that take place on: 

 • 10/01 Friday 17h - 12/01 Sunday 17h  
 • 16/01 Thursday 17-20h 
 • 21/01 Tuesday 16-20h 
 • Tuesdays 28/01, 04/02, 11/02, 18/02, 25/02: 17-20h 

through both periods 3 and 4. 

More information on the practicalities of our opening week-end will follow. We will stay in Wageningen and have sessions from morning around 9-10h to evening (+-21h) on Friday from 17h-21h. A part of this is also just spending time together. 

Topics we will dive into are:  
Prefiguration, building trust, transparency, system change, community building, care, social processes, communicating emotions, love & sexuality, grief, nervous system regulation, toxic cultures, conflict resolution, complicity in bigger systems of oppression, envisioning, joy & celebration 

As preperation for the sessions, you will often be asked to do an exercise or reading before coming to the session. This could take around 2-4h per week. The assignments will exist of journaling and a final reflection essay. The course is a 4 credits (ECTS) pass/fail course (no grades). 

Who is the course for?  
We invite everyone interested or experienced in the topics of commmunity & activism, from students to staff but also to people outside of the WUR.  
We welcome everyone, with all different backgrounds, all different levels of experience(s), all different ways of being, all different abilities, identities, ... 

Commitments 
To create a safe environment, we ask attends to make the following commitments:  

 • Presence: We ask attendants to be present at all sessions. To create a group container, it is not possible to attend individual sessions.
• Transparency and self-revelation: We expect attendants to be reflective of their own experiences and dare to share them with the group. 

Both commitments are important to build and maintain a foundation of trust that is at the essence of community. 

Research Frame
The course is connected to our thesis project with the Sociology of Development and Change Group and the insights of the course will be used in our Master Thesis on Community Building in Activism.

Excited to have you!!
In solidarity,

Foxie and Luca