Building a radical organisation (Part 1)
Our Approach
As an organisation, we recognise the need to exist differently. We often talk about how none of the KIN team have previously worked in an organisation that is Black-led and centres care centred, anti-oppressive practice. To achieve this, we are committed to embedding core practices and principles into our way of working. Although the journey may be tricky and messy, we are determined to document and share our learning along the way.
Our core practices and principles include:
Practising Dignity Affirmation
Upholding and respecting the inherent dignity of every individual.Recognising Interdependence
Valuing the interconnectedness of people and communities.Locating Ourselves and Our Communities in History
Situating our work within the broader historical context of our communities.Trusting Our Collective Inner Wisdom
Relying on the collective insights and experiences of our community members.Unlearning Oppressive Systems
Identifying and working to dismantle oppressive systems and practices that have seeped into our lives and organising.Imagining New Possibilities
Facilitating spaces for audacious dreaming and envisioning new possibilities.Experimenting with Transformation
Embracing experimentation to foster meaningful transformation.
By integrating these principles into our operations, we aim to build an organisation that is truly reflective of our values and mission.
KIN’s internal approach aims to provide staff, partner organisations, and all collaborators with a clear guide for where we're going and how we get there. This is about the being and doing that enables our external delivery to happen in a way that feels human and aligned with our values.
Our approaches help steer our day-to-day activities, communications, decision-making, and interpersonal interactions with people both inside and outside of KIN. They also include benchmarking accountability and providing direction for KIN, as well as enabling us to recognise and celebrate our successes. In keeping us connected to our mission and values, we hope that our external work and our internal way of doing remain congruent.
Core Principles Guiding Our Work
Joyful: Is our work joyful and nourishing?
Here, we are not defining joy as happiness, which is a fleeting emotion, but rather as a deeper way of connecting and meaning-making. We want our work to facilitate connection, provide spaciousness, and feel meaningful. At the beginning and throughout each project, we seek to ask ourselves and our collaborators:
What would this project being done in a joyful way look like for you? (Or, if we were to do this project in a joyful way, what would that look like?)
Slow: Can we connect fully to ourselves, each other, and the work in a way that sees our humanity?
We are committed to interrupting urgency culture, allowing us to slow down and give ourselves what we need before taking action.
How can we personally and collectively interrupt urgency culture to slow things down? What would it look like to pause and give ourselves what we need before sending an email or responding to that piece of feedback?
Experimental: Are we open to trying new things?
We believe in modelling radical practice by being open to experimentation and trying new approaches.
How are we modelling radical practice? Are we being open to trying new things?
Sustainable: Is rest and care centred in our culture, practice, and organisation?
Sustainability for us means embedding rest and care into our work culture, ensuring that the way we work is something we are proud to share with the movement.
Is the way that we're working something we want to share with the movement?
Reflective: Is there room for self or collective reflection and learning in our day-to-day?
We prioritise reflection as a key component of our work, creating opportunities for learning and sharing.
Can we take opportunities to share new skills and tools or insights? Is there something we can feedback on or celebrate?
Our Values, Meaning, and Actions
Solidarity
We recognise that Black folk are not a monolith. Our struggles can look and feel different, but they are innately interwoven. We exist to build the capacity of those working across the movement for Black liberation. We organise with an ethos of collaboration and recognise that it is impossible to do and be everything—in fact, trying to do and be everything hurts us and weakens our struggle.
What this looks like: This value manifests as working to understand and celebrate our differences. We work to visualise and bring clarity to how we are the same and how the struggles are intertwined.
In practice: We work to be inclusive of all Black folk and to be critical of the ways we organise, which may be exclusive, e.g. the language we are using or the way we conduct our meetings.
Reverence
Collective liberation includes and involves being in the right relationship with all of the natural world. We believe that humans are a part of and inextricable from the environment around us. Building capacity for a sustainable movement for liberation involves acknowledging the influence of capitalism and white supremacist culture in our organising practices and actively working to question and unlearn the harmful ways that whiteness shows up in our work.
We want a world in which everybody is able to flourish, along with the rest of the natural world, and we will work to ensure our processes and practices honour and revere life and land.
What this looks like: This value manifests as creating spaces where people feel inherently valued, honoured, and held. This also manifests as checking that our processes and practices honour and revere life and land.
In practice: Agreements that are signed by staff, partners, and contractors in KIN spaces reflect this value.
Joy
Joy is a collective endeavour, and we want our organising spaces to be rooted in joy, which is about seeing our struggles and still believing in more. Joy is not about lightness—we can still choose to create joy even when the work is heavy.
What this looks like: This value manifests in our spaces being places to laugh, connect, dance, play, and dream our wildest dreams.
Accountability
We will be accountable to each other and honest about what we can take on. We will centre relationships and allow for honesty about what people can contribute.
What this looks like: Accountability means taking responsibility for our feelings and our relationships with others. We seek to respond to honest opinions and concerns with love and self-reflection. Challenges to any raised concerns are encouraged, but must be done with softness. We all cause harm, often unintentionally, and in those moments, we seek to apply an approach of restorative justice to collectively heal our relationships.
Queer Affirming
Valuing the whole person is about accepting and honouring people for who they are and how they can be in the world. This value manifests in our work, interactions, and spaces.
What this looks like: We proactively challenge damaging behavioural patterns that replicate patriarchal structures which are oppressive to queer folk.
In practice: We recognise that problematic behaviour learnt through culture, history, and socialisation can be unlearned. In instances where problematic behaviours occur, we commit to addressing the behaviour itself in a way that sees the person behind the behaviour. We commit to providing tools, resources, and training to KIN staff and network members (if desired) in ways to approach conflict with love and connection rather than fear and separation.
We believe that we are trying to build the kind of organisation none of us have worked in before. There’s room for mess and for play. If you’re on a similar journey, please reach out! We’d love to hear about how you and your collectives or organisations are working to embed your politics into your organisations.
Love,
Kinfolk Network
