Our Shared Belonging showcase booklet

Our Shared Belonging

Findings from a 6-month Learning Marathon on home and belonging

Introduction In March 2021, six peers set out on a Learning Marathon to ask and explore our questions of home and belonging.

Together, we grew our questions; sensed our own and collective boundaries; engaged all our senses with intimate conversations on food, intersectionality, migration, motherhood, landscapes, childhood, roots, family, seeds, and so much more.

Our co-created curriculum of fortnightly workshops held us warmly, and helped us explore our intersectional identities; learn to navigate challenging conversations; find a voice to tell our stories through poetry and the senses; curating the objects and rituals that guide us to the home within us; engage our hands to spark conversation, and so much more.

Who would imagine that the depths we explored- inside ourselves, with each other, and out into the world- were all online! We found our home in the spaces in-between our Zoom windows. We celebrated, supported, even hugged each other virtually.

This booklet shares our 6-month long journey, learnings, and questions.

We invite you to join us and explore Our Shared Belonging.

Learning Marathon Class of 2021 Fan Sissoko

How can I carry the feeling of home and being welcome always with me - and pass it on to my child?

Isabella McDonnell

How can I catalyse connection to tackle cultural isolation?

Katie Todd

How might we inspire our diverse communities to learn from each other and live contentedly side-by-side?

Phillippa L. Scrafton

How can we as community activists bring together our diverse communities to ind our shared belonging?

Yas Necati

How can I create a greater sense of home for myself when everything is so transient?

Jahnvi Singh (Host)

How might we collectively redesign our world so everyone belongs?

Welcome to our table. This is what home tastes like for us.

Today, home tastes leek and potato so and nourishing. Th of my relationships The texture is like surrounds me whe The soup is thick li house. Bread and b of the home that t mundane, but secu think about it.

Katie

Among beds of bright rosemary and sleepy lavender, this is where I take root.

Watching you unravel this tightly-wrapped gift - a bamboo leaf hiding a perfect cube of sticky rice. This is where I take root.

Purrs like earthquakes on my chest bringing me firmly into the present. This is how I grow roots.

Your laughter, as nourishing as a cacophony of swallows nurturing their young at sunrise. You water my roots.

Italian, Spanish, Tagalog, Cockney slang. You prop up my roots when life is like typhoon season.

My flowers look like darkening freckles and black hair reflecting red in the summer sun.

Their fragrance is like crushed cardamon on my fingers from making tea and vine stems on my palms from picking the tomatoes my father has grown.

Isabella

I always thought I hated fresh figs. But one year when I was a teenager and we were in Cyprus, my grandparents convinced me to try one of the figs from their garden.

It was sweet as joy. Each morning after, we ate figs for breakfast from that tree, until we had to leave. I have had figs since, in other contexts – they have all sadly been disappointing in comparison. Figs from my grandparents’ tree are the taste of home for me.

Yas

s like a bowl of homemade oup. Soft, creamy, comforting he pepper is the excitement s with my husband and dog. a comforting blanket that en I am cold, or concerned. ike the walls that form our butter represent the solidity the three of us have. A bit ure and gorgeous when I

When home is a refuge, it tastes like mashed potatoes and fish fingers. When home is nostalgia, it tastes like the grains of sand that have made their way inside your post-swim crêpe. When home is far away, it tastes like 5 mangoes tucked in your suitcase for good luck. When home is an arrival, it tastes like cold butter spread on a fresh crusty baguette.

When home hurts, it tastes like the comforting silence of a plate of white rice. When home is a place of care, it tastes like the rawness of garlic left on a mother’s fingers. When home is a new beginning, it tastes like the sugar rush of too many coconut macaroons.

Fan

If you ask my Paati (grandmother), my mom, or me what ‘home’ tastes like, we’d all say thayir sadam (as yoghurt rice is known in Tamil)!

Tempered with mustard seeds, curry leaves and red chilli, seasoned with salt and dotted with (this is the family secret!) sweet green grapes.

Home tastes like the sweetest tea, Home tastes like the bitterest of coffees.

Home tastes like a plump ripe strawberry, Home tastes like a sharp bitter lemon.

Home tastes like chilli flakes dancing on my tongue, Home tastes like a symphony of flavours, reminiscent of a song yet to be sung.

Pips

Food from home is sweet, sour, salty and spicy.

It sounds like the crackly fireworks of mustard seeds hitting hot oil and of the symphony of the cooking ladle striking and stirring around the pan. It’s the food that makes memories flood back. The taste that makes me close my eyes, smile and say, ‘everything’s going to be ok’.

Jahnvi

Fan How can I carry the feeling of home and being welcome always with me and pass it on to my child?

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

“Home is the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

Maya Angelou

I was born in Paris. My dad is from Mali. I moved to Ireland when I was 20 years old, my daughter was born in London and I now live in Iceland.

When I started this Learning Marathon, my question was related to my experience as an immigrant. I mostly understood home as a place and belonging as a way to fit into that place.

However, as I did more reading and more listening, both to myself and others, my understanding of belonging changed in two ways.

Firstly, I started understanding that one of the reasons I never really felt at home was that I never felt a strong connection to my heritage, because it wasn’t shared with me. This made me reflect on my role as a parent and how I can share a sense of belonging with my daughter.

I started thinking about heritage not as a fixed culture to pass down, but as a living set of values, that I can build with my daughter in the present. So I had this idea of building a box for her, and filling it with objects, handmade books, and memories that we can use together as conversation starters for when she feels uprooted or alone.

Secondly, during this Learning Marathon, I learned that I am autistic.

This has brought me such clarity. It helped me understand that the sense of unbelonging I’ve felt all my life was not just due to being Black mixed-race or being a migrant. It helped me be kinder to myself, start respecting my needs and stop bending myself in impossible shapes to fit the expectations society has of me. It’s a journey, but I’m getting there.

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

I’ve learned that we are our own homes. That our belonging does not depend on other people’s acceptance, but on our own. I’ve learned that I used to flow like a river, following the curve of the land, negotiating my way around others. I’ve learned that I used to think of home as a lake: static, stagnant, its limits fixed by the land.

I’ve learned that my home needs to be more like the sea: infinite and deep. The sea does not get shaped by the land. It shapes the land.

Fan is a French-Malian designer and artist based in Reykjavík. She specialises in human-centred design and research methods that place people at the centre of social innovation. For the last 10 years Fan has worked with charities and the public sector to improve health and

“To anyone who feels like they don’t belong, I say: build a sense of belonging in your own mind, body and nature, a sense of belonging that no one can take from you. Learn to inhabit yourself.”

Anitha Sethi

care systems in the UK. As an artist, Fan uses storytelling to create experiences that urge us to shed the layers of identity that separate us from others and to explore the hidden emotions that connect us instead.

You can find Fan at www.whatfandoes.com and on Twitter and Instagram @whatfandoes

Isabella How can I catalyse connection to tackle cultural isolation?

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

My own story of belonging spans five countries and six languages. I was born and raised in England, to immigrant parents from the Philippines, America and New Zealand. My family has lived between Italy, the Philippines, and America since I was 13-year-old. I have studied in the UK, US and Argentina.

While I was raised in English, I lived in a multilingual, multicultural and diverse atmosphere. I’ve also found home, love and belonging in Spanish and Italian. My newest loves and journeys of belonging are in learning French and Arabic.

While I’ve had the privilege of traveling the world and connecting with people from all walks of life, this fluid and dynamic identity of mine has never been easy to negotiate or communicate to those who could not understand or appreciate a globalist, multicultural experience. I learned to code switch and translate my value to whomever I met, no matter their context. Learning multiple languages, studying psychology and exploring the world became my power in this unending quest to assert my belonging to others.

“Relish the feeling of being viewed as weird or inappropriate or confusing to people, and society becomes your playground and blank canvas, not something to grovel before and hope for acceptance from.”

Diane Ackerman

I’ve spent many years reflecting on ideas of home and belonging on my own.

But it was only until I developed my learning question and found the Enrol Yourself community - our Learning Marathon - that I was able to finally find a true sense of belonging rooted in community.

All of a sudden, my inner challenges and anxieties around my belonging disappeared. Here I was, finally surrounded by an inspiring, sensitive group of people who were grappling with the same or similar questions. I was no longer alone in my struggle and suffering.

My podcast, which is the outcome of my learning journey, will be the space where I can gather and unfold these beautiful, unique stories on what it means to be culturally complex in a world that struggles with difference.

Before the learning marathon, home was something I needed to ‘figure out’ for myself - the fantasy of home being a single, static place where I would be surrounded by those who would accept me. A physical place where I could

go forth without being questioned. I used to think, ‘home is...Città di Castello, London, Buenos Aires, New York, Manila, Washington D.C….’

Now, home is not a place. Home is the life I build for myself and others alongside the people to whom I am in service. Home is wherever love is given and received.

My time spent contributing to this group and volunteering in mental health support, especially during the pandemic, has revealed to me how much we share in common - how we all suffer, experience aloneness, rejection and fear. All that’s needed to cross this bridge between misunderstanding and connection is deep listening: the act of allowing someone to empty their heart so that they might learn to open up to yours. Compassion is our direct path to belonging.

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

I’ve learned that to find belonging in oneself, you first need to surround yourself with people who see your power, potential and value. That is what our group has taught me.

Isabella is a dispute

This is the first, necessary step to build the needed confidence in order to face our world and assert your belonging to others who might question it and how you self-identify.

resolution paralegal and

You can only move forward as a person who feels rooted to this world by understanding your past traumas, history, and the narrative you replay to yourself about your circumstances and who you believe you are. Our own narratives can free us or entrap us. These stories can either make space for belonging or create barriers to it. Now is the perfect time to re-write your story.

She believes the law can help

future polyglot, exploring the interface between psychology, law and ethics. foster a more open-minded, empathetic society.

Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Katie How might we inspire our diverse communities to learn from each other and live contentedly side-by-side?

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

I live in Batley - a small Multicultural town in West Yorkshire. I wasn’t born here but I have found my forever home.

The problem that we have is that, although things are getting better, the two main communities rarely mix. It feels as if we are divided by our main road.

Katie lives in Batley, West

My original learning question was to try and find out why this was the case. I soon realised that I wouldn’t be able to change the fact that the communities live on different sides of the road and what I was really interested in is how we bring the two communities together.

is happiest when she’s creating

This took me on “my journey” which has taught me a lot and introduced me to so many new people and new experiences.

bringing people together, she is

Yorkshire. A very diverse little town. She lives with her husband, works part-time, and - whether when she is sewing or volunteering at the local community garden. As someone who loves reaching out and keen to explore what is keeping her multiracial town divided, and how she can help build belonging in Batley.

Katie will be working with The Jo Cox Foundation’s More in Common network to create

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

awareness around racial division

I think that the biggest lesson for me was I thought that all different groups of people are often discriminated against. Meeting people from my group and hearing their stories made me realise that everybody can feel they “don’t belong.” I am white, I am female, I am straight, I don’t feel as if I have suffered discrimination and yet one workshop really left me realising that the destructive relationship I had with my sister still has left me with scars. These scars have never healed. It still has repercussions on my relationships with other people in my family unit. So, in a way, I have been discriminated against by her and this remains a very deep wound. “Go away and play with your own friends, these are my friends.” Trouble is when you don’t have any friends or the confidence to find them, where does a person go? They become loners, they make their own entertainment, they make friends with whatever they can find. My very best friend was Billy, a bull at the local farm, and my Teddy Bears.

for the larger More in Common

Of course, now I realise that she was unkind. I know that being kind is so important.

in local communities and capture learnings from her experiences network.

Pips How can we as community activists bring together our diverse communities to find our shared belonging?

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

For me, before I started the Learning Marathon ‘home’ was the ‘safe space’ with my family and my peers. That sense of belonging we all search for was, for me at least, created in that safety. Safe in the knowledge I would not be judged or ‘othered’ for my gender identity. Coming from the LGBTQ+ community, I have always sought out these spaces, where I could find afinity with others, sharing lived experiences and connecting with interesting people to hear their stories.

Through the Learning Marathon however my idea of a ‘safe space’ has shifted, but at the same time become accutely more focused.

My journey took me along ‘... a yellow brick road of joy, sadness, new challenge and endless questioning.’ So many questions! An at each step of this journey the opportunity to share this learning with five incredible people who started as strangers and have ended up so much more!

Through the meet-ups we delivered, the conversations shared and insights provided, I feel ‘home’ is now a space we can create ‘together.’ Any of us, many of us. ‘Like the ingredients of a meal, correctly mixed the result can be very special!’

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

Every stage of this incredible Marathon has been insightful for me.

From every conversation, meet-up, buddy session and presentation we shared I have stepped away from the screen feeling inspired, empowered and more determined. All the sessions have been so insightful in my Learning Marathon. I had my doubts at the begining we could achieve this via a ‘screen’ if I am truly honest... but achieve them we did.

If I had to pick out something of a ‘lightbulb moment’ for me it would be ‘making tulips, paper tulips’... An almost innocuous activity as making paper tulips, and something likened to play. However the conversation our cohort had whilst sharing this task covered topics such as pronouns, non-binary identity, othering, racism, community cohesion and belonging and it stayed with me for such a long time after the session. I was compelled to ‘mount’ my finished tulip in my journal, and I still reflect on that session regularly.

Pips Phillippa, better known as ‘Pips’ lives in the North East of England in Darlington, a part of the world she loves. She’s chatty and usually walks round with a permanent smile on her face. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and has been an activist for LGBT+ equality for over 20 years.

Pips is voluteering with The Jo Cox Foundation’s More in Common network to create sustainable and meaningful community bonds through the ‘More In Common Darlington’ group as well as the wider More in Common network You can find Pips on Twitter @Pippa13pink and Instagram @purplepips13

Yas How can I create a greater sense of home for myself when everything is so transient?

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

The place I have always felt most at home is a beach a 25 minute walk away from my grandparents village in Yesilirmak, Cyprus. Their village sits on a border, but at this beach you can no longer see the fences or the conscripted 18 year old boy soldiers. I have a strong memory from when I was younger of my mum telling me not to stray too far down one side of the beach or the other in case I accidentally crossed the border. She didn’t know which side was “ours” and which was “theirs”. The crabs and the fish probably crossed the border daily.

It’s a place that reminds me how futile borders are – that even if our home is divided by others, it doesn’t have to be bordered to us.

I was 18 the last time I visited this beach, this particular piece of my home. For many years, I have been trying to hear the sound of the waves in London cafes and trying to feel the sand on my feet in sand pits of city playgrounds.

Over this journey to try to come closer to home, a friend said to me “home is what we imagine”. She was talking about Turkey, where she is from, and how both of us have idealised the places our families left. We paint them as idyllic, we are nostalgic about them, we forget to notice their flaws – in this way we have fictionalised them. They do not exist as we imagine them, but what we have imagined is still valuable. It’s what we think of when we think of home. And here there is hope – because it means we can imagine more into our ideas of home. And we can bring those imaginings closer to us – even if they are based off of a physical space, they are not that physical space, they transcend physical space, much like the land transcends borders.

I don’t want there to be a border between me and home anymore, I don’t want to only ever experience it by getting on an aeroplane. I

am imagining more home for myself. I’m internalising it. I’m finding it in dancing in the kitchen while washing the dishes, in the warmth of sutlu borek in the back of my throat, in going for late night walks with myself, in cat purrs waking me up in the morning and in holding the hands of the people I love. And I’m also finding it when the sun licks my skin, and I can close my eyes and feel myself on the beach watching the crabs scuttle.

Yas Necati is a writer, journalist and performer based in London.

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

When I was ill with covid, I was overwhelmed with how kind my loved ones were. They brought me books to read and ordered me meals. My grandma cooked me dinner every day and left it at my door. Friends even rallied together to help find my cat who had gone missing – one knocking on neighbours’ doors and calling for her, another printing and hanging posters all around the surrounding streets. Even though I was isolated in a room with no outside contact, I felt held beautifully in multiple arms. It reminded me that belonging is about the people we share life with. Any time I feel like I’m floating, I know I can find the arms of a loved one to bring me home.

They explore themes of queer and trans identity, migrant identity, mental health, recovery, community and resistance in their work. They also campaign on gender-based and queer basedrights, run workshops on self care, and occasionally perform as their drag act alter-ego, Turkish pop star Tarkan.

You can find them at https://www.yasnecati.co.uk/ and follow them on Twitter @YasNecati

Jahnvi How might we collectively redesign our world so everyone belongs?

“We begin belonging to his world first by rooting ourselves into it; by staking out a little corner of it to call our very own. It need not have walls or a roof, but only from that place of safety can we reach out to connect, to understand one another, and to begin belonging together.”

Maria Popova

What was home before you started your learning marathon, and what is home now? Where did your learning question lead you?

These six months (and more) have been an embodiment of Maria Popova's words- a dance between me and the community I live and learn with across the world!

Amidst the many questions that were alive for me in 2020, the loudest one at the beginning of this journey was personal- asking if I could curate my belonging to be cyclical and adaptive. I had just moved to the UK, was homesick, didn’t know many people in this new place, and felt a deep disconnection with who I needed to be in the times we were living through.

My explorations included conversations with my family (discovering my grandmother’s journey of migration, recipes from home, wisdom from my elders) and of course, this inspiring group of peers that had gathered to co-create Our Shared Belonging. Our fortnightly meetups formed the most powerful learning experience I had ever been on.

I developed a framework (left) to help me navigate towards my sense of belonging, and even crafted a workshop for facilitators to create spaces of belonging for everyone who joins an experience (including themselves!).

As my personal quest for belonging unfolded, our collective efforts to create this space of play, vulnerability, and collaboration started shaping another question inside me - How might we collectively redesign our world so everyone belongs? Where we no longer need to apologise for being ourselves. Where we recognise and offer our gifts to each other constantly, navigating not only to our own belonging, but to chart a shared journey home?

This is the curiosity I sit with at the end of our journey, knowing that this is just the beginning...

What insights on belonging did you gather along the way?

Being ‘at home’ or our ‘sense’ of belonging is the feeling of being safe, comfortable, accepted and valued. It is not a destination, but the interconnected moments where we come alive and come to rest, together.

While this can be an abstract idea, we can use all our senses to detect it. Belonging has taste, a sound, a smell and a texture. As we hone our ability to be present and find acceptance- in our bodies, in the places we find ourselves in, and the people we are surrounded by - we can start to navigate towards our moments of belonging constantly.

The many conversations on belonging I had with friends and family this last year have taught me that our journeys home (leaving and returning) and our stories of belonging (or not) are unique to each of us. Yet our individual narratives also weave into a collective tapestry of relationships and belonging – even as I sometimes feel like I stand by myself, I know I am not alone.

Jahnvi is a learning designer, facilitator, coach and an Enrol Yourself Host. She is also a migrant, bilingual, a passionate home-cook and a lifelong learner. Born and raised in India, she’s spent the last few years finding home and belonging in the US, and now the UK. Drawing on her journey as a migrant navigating her many belongings, she wanted to host Our Shared Belonging to connect with others like her - crossing boundaries in search of home, community, belonging and purpose.

You can find Jahnvi on Twitter and Instagram @Jahnvi_lxd

By mapping all my conversations and explorations through this journey, I created this framework to find our sense of belonging- rooted in our relationships to ourselves, to others, to tangible places and our intangible purpose (the place you carve for yourself in the world).

Our journey Over the six months, each of us offered two workshops to share our skills and help build new lenses to explore our learning questions with.

Each 2-hour space was a powerful reminder of the magic of collective enquiry and lifelong learning.

“Pips' meet-up on intersectionality was both moving and empowering - the workshop opened my eyes to the flexibility inherent in our many identities, how identity is shaped by power hierarchies, and how often we

“An almost innocuous activity as

need to code-switch in order to adapt MEETUP #1

Understanding identity Pips

making paper tulips. However,

to our environments and contexts to

the conversation we had whilst

survive.” Isabella

sharing this task covered topics pronouns, non-binary identity, racism, cohesion and belonging and it stayed with me for such a long time after the session.”

MEETUP #2

Pips

Poetry of home Yas

MEETUP #5

Making fabric tulips Katie

MEETUP #4 MEETUP #3

Navigating difficult conversations Isabella

Museum of me: curating our stories Jahnvi

MEETUP #6

Storytelling and belonging Fan

“Jahnvi got us to look at the

“I found it amazing to ground our

objects that surround us and

journeys in the physical, and to get

their meaning for us. By the end

creative with how to interpret the

of the session, objects I hadn’t

objects/smells/places that mean

given much thought about before

home to us.”

became portals to home.”

Yas

Fan

“The most profound workshop that we

“A big part of the journey to find

undertook was the “restorative justice”

belonging is to recognise, come to

workshop by Isabella. I went along

terms with, and call in all the parts of

thinking it would be about our judicial

our lives that we (or someone else)

system. It made me look at myself in

silenced. Isabella crafted a deeply

ways that were uncomfortable but it

reflective and safe space for us to

taught me that despite my attempts

explore the importance of reflective

to forgive my sister I haven’t managed

circles in navigating our unbelonging.”

to yet.”

Jahnvi

Katie

MEETUP #8

MEETUP #7

Ritual design: sense making through small acts of belonging Jahnvi

What we can learn from restorative justice for the communities we’re building Isabella MEETUP #9

Queer alternative belonging

MEETUP #11

Learning how to juggle

Yas

Katie MEETUP #10

Autism and belonging Fan

Check out our online showcase https://readymag. com/Showcase/ OurSharedBelonging/

Enrol Yourself is an award-winning social enterprise redesigning lifelong learning by harnessing the power of peer groups to multiply individual and collective development.

The Learning Marathon is a six month peer-led learning accelerator designed to integrate into life alongside work. enrolyourself.com email: hello@enrolyourself.com Blog: medium.com/enrol-yourself Twitter: @EnrolYourself Instagram: @enrol_yourself