ongoing work on actions for accessible, inclusive ecologies of creative learning

Living Protocol

Ecological Imaginaries came into existence at ONCA in Brighton and has been supported by thinking together in community about arts, culture, accessibility and inclusion. We strive to continuously develop living protocols for inclusive and accessible collaborations – across this programme, and in general across our creative work. This is a commitment to continual action and an ongoing process of inquiry into what is missing and making changes for what is needed. Our values are loosely structured around bell hooks’ 6 ingredients for love: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.

Care

Our work comes from care. We connect and communicate shared knowledge to inspire, connect others and strengthen art-making and activism.

We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to engage, and we appreciate poetic and experimental modes of communication can connect in lasting ways too, and are committed to actively experimenting with diverse modalities, such as spoken word, image, written text, and art. We are happy to welcome a variety of communicative forms to give various options for engagement: from succinct summaries and clear information to orientate, to more free-form meandering spoken-word conversations, to artistic forms of poetic communication.

We encourage and work with creatives presenting work to make their projects as inclusive and accessible as possible. We want to make the materials and conversations accessible to diverse participants, such as people with learning disabilities, visual & hearing impairments, and people who are non-native English speakers, by offering translations where we can.

Commitment

By learning together and keeping the programme free we are actively inviting participation and seeking to support communities and activists who are ignored and systematically excluded from mainstream arts and culture.

We cannot promise a safe space, but we can promise commitment and to take our role seriously in responding to what happens. We promise to listen to questions, concerns in general, and any cases of harassment and seek to deal with problems openly and swiftly.

Collaboration

Working collaboratively with others to create, learn and make space together about the commons is at the centre of this learning encounter. The living conversations seek to share knowledge in a collaborative and welcoming way. We welcome feedback about how we can meet you and evolve the learning space.

Responsibility

The event technologies, ecologies is aimed at activists and the general public over 15. It may not be suitable for young children, but we are open to all adults, anywhere in the world and everyone is welcome. The programme is in English, though we will make efforts to provide some translations of sessions.

We actively support and align with individuals who are, and organizations who represent: LGBTQIA+ people, people of colour, people living with disabilities and people on low incomes. We partner with community-led organizations on projects that aim to increase participation amongst (or with) marginalised groups. However, we will not work with people or organizations who promote sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, and racism and we will ask any participant engaging in harassing behavior to leave the programme (cf. Harassment section below).

Respect

We treat other beings and the places where we live and work with respect. We ask that you do the same, with those you encounter on the programme, and in the places and communities you live in. From you, we ask for an earnest commitment of time and attention, and that you engage with others with warmth and care.

Openness

We are open in our aims and efforts, and are engaged in trying to live and embody the new commons, as well as learn about it together.

with thanks

Harassment 

We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to stop immediately.

Harassment includes:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion

• Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names

• Threats of violence

• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm

• Deliberate intimidation

• Sustained disruption of discussion

• Unwelcome sexual attention

• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease

• Publication of non-harassing private communication

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please make contact. We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

If a participant engages in harassing behaviour, the admins may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including asking them to leave the programme and identifying the participant publicly as someone about whom we've received complaints.

Privacy

There are various spaces such as book groups, dream sessions and in-person conversations that are intended as open experimental playful space. Materials shared will not be put to any public use or shown without permission.

The online zoom calls are recorded and shared online, so please be aware that anything that you say will be recorded for posterity. We will remind you of this at the beginning of each zoom session.

Also, please be mindful that what you share on Discord may at some point become public, for we cannot prevent people from screengrabbing or logging anything shared online. We also can't guarantee that every member's login credentials and logged-in devices are secure. Files uploaded on Discord can be downloaded by anyone with a login.

Please exercise caution and discretion and do not share sensitive information online that could harm you or others if it became public.

Credits and License

With particular thanks to Persephone Pearl at ONCA and the support of ONCA’s Reading Groups in 2020 and Trudy Lane at Intercreate and Lene Vollhardt and The Sphere towards thinking through living protocol and policy. ONCA’s anti-racist policy is here: onca.org.uk/2020/09/23/anti-racist-policy

The harassment guidelines are from @Omsk Social Club's Code of Conduct. Omsk Social Club's Code of Conduct in turn is based on Annalee Flower Horne's Sample Slack Code of Conduct, which is in turn based on Geek Feminism's Community Anti-Harassment Policy. They have adapted the Sample Slack Code of Conduct for our own use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.

The Accessibility and Privacy guidelines are adapted from social.coop.