WHAT WE DO

Who is KIN for?

KIN is a network that exists for any Black person who is doing radical, liberatory work on the frontlines in their communities. For KIN, Radical includes those working with an anti-oppressive and liberation centred practice and Black includes anyone from an African, Caribbean and/or mixed race ancestry.

Our programme:

  • Political Education: knowledge-sharing and learning, deepening our understanding of global social, political and historic contexts and strategising.

  • Community Gathering: Think solidarity economics, relationship-building, listening and collective solution finding. They include community meals and regular online Town hall gatherings.

  • Kinfolk Annual Convening: Our annual multi-day residential is a chance for the Black activist community across the UK and beyond to go deeper, to plan and to rest for Black liberation. Here we remember and imagine ways of building beyond what currently is. Through workshops, facilitated sessions, body movement and wellbeing practices  this is a space where insatiable hope meets meaningful action.

    Other Core work:

  • We are working on building out our radical infrastructure by moving towards an approach that centers people, anti-oppressive practice, solidarity, interdependance and care.

  • This involves building an organisation that is rooted in our principles, thinking about staff care, radical approaches to governance, sustainable ways of being and doing, conflict transformation, feedback and all of our living systems.


THE CONTEXT

Kinfolk Network was established in 2017. At the time, Trump had just been elected and the Brexit referendum had rocked and divided the UK.

As a consequence, there was a felt need for accessible, well-resourced, restorative spaces for Black campaigners, grassroots organisers and activists - across the UK - to come together in community to rest, connect, strategise, heal and be held accountable.

Kinfolk Network’s co-founders saw this as a crucially missing and necessary piece of infrastructure for the Black liberation movement.

THE WHAT

Kinfolk Network (KIN) holds space for Black activists, organisers and campaigners to come together, learn from each other and build meaningful relationships rooted in love, collectivity and kinship. We believe that having a well-resourced, well-connected movement for Black liberation is crucial and that powerful social movements are made up of, in Adrienne Maree Brown's words, ‘critical connections’ which sustain the work of movements for generations.

For Kinfolk Network, Black includes anyone from an African, Caribbean and/or mixed race ancestry. Whilst the main purpose of Kinfolk Network spaces is to centre folk who are of caribbean, african or mixed descent, Kinfolk Network recognises the utility of political Blackness and the importance of working together with other racialised folks, and seeks to be in connection and solidarity with activists who identify as people of the global majority - we do this through coordinating spaces for solidarity.

OUR APPROACH

  • Learning from, and collaborating with black activists throughout the UK and beyond helps decentralise our thinking and offerings, and better ensures that our work is accessible and relevant. 

  • Creating safer spaces for the most marginalised black activists, including members of the queer community, and those who are most marginalised within it; as well as, people with disabilities, neurodivergent folks, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers working in support of each other.

  • Restoration, healing and joy is both a by-product and a destination, we strive to be intentional in everything we do and in how we do it. “In a world full of turmoil, remember that joy is an act of resistance!”- Audre Lorde.


We want to explore what our history, present and future is in achieving liberation. What does Black liberation look like here in the UK? How is it unique and how does it compare to France, Brazil, Germany or the US? What is common in our struggle but not in our strategy? How are we coping as humans in an increasingly openly fascist world?

OUR VISION

Two black people reading together

Collective liberation

  • Our ultimate vision is for collective liberation: a world in which everybody is able to flourish, along with the rest of the natural world. We contribute to this vision holding spaces that centre joy, healing and solidarity.

Collective care

  • We dream of spaces of restoration, accountability, and transformative justice. We seek to share ways of knowing and being that we have inherited from our ancestors.

Uplifting a diverse community of Black activists

  • We dream of a rich diversity of Black activists being uplifted and celebrated in liberatory spaces, in which those at the margins of our community are centred for the benefit and liberation of all.

“If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

– Lilla Watson

OUR GOALS

  • Radical, nourishing & joyful spaces: regular online and offline spaces that build collective power by enabling activists from across the UK to share and learn from each other.

  • Radical & Irresistible resources: archiving the wisdom of our communities, developing and sharing resources for liberation and sustainable activism including, solidarity mapping, community mapping and recording the wisdom shared at our gatherings for community benefit.

  • Radical organisational development: modelling sustainable working rooted in anti-oppression and care.