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 perpetuating ourselves 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 5pm - Sunday 5pm  
 • 16/01 Thursday 5-8pm 
 • 21/01 Tuesday 4-8pm 
 • Tuesdays 28/01, 04/02, 11/02 , 18/02, 25/02: 5-8pm 

through both periods 3 and 4. 

More information on the practicalities of our opening weekend will follow. We are looking into locations to stay over night. If that is not working out, we will stay in Wageningen and have offers throughout the days.

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 preparation 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 consist 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 community & 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 attendees 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.

SIGN UP via: https://forms.gle/EXj6H8SJTpyrFqDM7 

For questions, send otherwise@wur.nl 

Excited to have you!!
In solidarity,

Foxie and Luca