Radicational @ The Royal Society of Arts (action research reflections)
And so to kick off 2020 with some just-do-it action research! This event was the first of three public events that I hosted during January 2020, in order to share with the world my learning question: how might we design radical unlearning that enrols humanity in collective liberation?
Before
The first event took place at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) in London, UK. Just so you know, the RSA is a long established charity that seeks to find practical solutions to social challenges. As part of its mission, the RSA is home to a network of ‘proactive problem solvers’ also known as their fellowship. As a fellow, I have the privilege (in all senses of the word) of sharing Radicational as a social change conversation which involved 30 minutes chat from me and 30 minutes of insight-gathering from the audience. Read on to learn more about my findings…
For some context, here’s the event blurb (feel free to skip ahead if you get the gist):
January 17th, 13.00–14.00: “Unlearning our way out of injustice” led by Vanessa Faloye
As a social justice educator who has delivered hundreds of workshops for corporates, NGOs, schools, universities, and community and youth groups all over the world — there is one thing Vanessa Faloye has observed: education as we know it is not fit for purpose. Learning is usually facilitated as one-off short-term interventions which fail to interrogate the things that get in the way of and block deep learning — our old attitudes, default behaviours, and false-limiting beliefs which are rooted in and stem from our socialised experiences and childhood traumas. These ‘blockers’ tend to be oppressive by nature and nurture and frame the ways in which we disconnect from, exploit, and harm both people and planet. Vanessa believes that without first dismantling these blockers, learning remains superficial, impermanent, and tokenistic. Furthermore, even if learners are able to get to the root of these blockers in the classroom, once they return to their everyday lives and contexts, these same old attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs are (instantly or gradually) re-triggered, reinforced, and rewarded by a world that has not yet caught up with our ‘new and improved’ learners. Ultimately this leads to relapse and other unintended consequences such as old behaviours co-opting new knowledge, not to mention an overall waste of time, energy, and investment. As part of Vanessa’s pedagogical vision and mission to find the leading edges in learning experience design, Radicational is an action research project that aims to understand how a deliberately designed pedagogy, process, and practice of unlearning can support transformative change-making. Like this, Radicational explores one critical question: how might we design radical unlearning that enrols humanity in collective liberation? Run by Vanessa, she defines unlearning as “a deep process of surfacing, examining, evaluating, and deactivating our default attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs in order to heal and grow through choosing, practicing, and integrating alternative ways of thinking, doing, and being”. If you would like to read more about her work with Radicational as critically radical education and unlearning, feel free to read her blog article here.
During
Here are my (very summarised) talking points from my presentation:
Who Am I? —Without the internalised narratives of work or fear, I am an empathic, radical, human being who is committed to freedom, belonging, and authenticity.
What am I up to in the world? —I’m building a curriculum, a culture, and a community committed to unlearning oppression, permanently.
What is Radicational? — A radically educational action research project that combines root cause research with problem-solving action to solve for the critical question of ‘How might we design radical unlearning that enrols humanity in collective liberation?’
Where/When did unlearning begin? — Though I spoke about this during my presentation… this is for another day, another article [insert life story].
What is unlearning? — See here and here and here for a range of diverging definitions and debates. My definition so far is: “a deep and deliberate process of surfacing, examining, evaluating, and deactivating our default attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs in order to heal and grow through choosing, practicing, and integrating alternative ways of thinking, doing, and being”.
How can you help me? — By sharing your thoughts and experiences of unlearning / By offering wisdom and resources / By recommending any events, podcasts, or other speaking opportunities for me to get the word out about Radicational / By signing up as a volunteer to be coached by me in unlearning (starting in March/April 2020). If you can help with any of these, click here
After
Here’s what I got from the audience in terms of questions and reflections:
Question: What did it take for me to decide that I want to unlearn my imposter syndrome? I answered with the exhaustion and injustice I felt at being robbed, constantly, of the joy and the passion I took from my work. I think it was the combination of exhaustion and despair that presented itself in a ‘now or never’ moment of sharing with my boss the shame I felt at not being good enough at my job and perpetually having to hide it from everyone around me. I remember expecting to be ‘sympathetically fired’ — but my boss at the time held space for me and responded with empathy and compassion. They continued to believe in me and expected me at work the next day and for many days after that. This was the turning point for me. The audience member who asked the question reflected back to me that they felt it was crucial to have someone who believed in you and was committed to your unlearning — I responded with agreement and shared that this is why I am training to become a coach in order to combine unlearning pedagogy with coaching methodology.
Reflections: One audience member spoke about the parallels between the need for unlearning in anti-oppression education and the need for unlearning in relation to the climate crisis. We went back and forth discussing the point that it is not that lots of people didn’t have a want or any motivation for changing their daily consumption habits, but rather they don’t know how — especially when our ways of consuming are so engrained and entangled in our everyday. In order to learn alternative ways of living and consuming, we first have to unlearn our current modus operandi aka operating system.
Another audience member spoke about the need for a community of people around you who are supportive of your unlearning process and can hold you accountable to it. However, they made the specific point that communities of this nature require a facilitator to guide the community’s process, values, culture, relationships, and the ultimate vision — in order to avoid mission-drift and problematic dynamics.
Following on from this, another audience member spoke about the need for a conducive environment such as selective media consumption, and again, the people you surround yourself with. However there were two further reflections that came off the back of this one. The first was that this particular audience member did not really see the difference between learning and unlearning which made me reflect on my clarity in stating the distinction as well as the simple fact that perhaps there wasn’t any difference — this is what my Radicational action research aims to find out. So I was humbled by their honesty and it helped me to go back to the drawing board of ‘is this even a thing? or am I making it into a fancy thing that sounds smart and sexy?’. And while I still believe that unlearning is distinct from learning because it is not about transferring new information, it is about excavating old information — I know I need to get better at explaining this. Cool. The second reflection that was really interesting was the way in which I found myself taking the bits and pieces of the story that this audience member so generously shared — and I automatically took them to fit my argument and already existing schemas. I caught myself doing it in the way I responded to her storytelling and her disagreement — and I was transparent about this meta-level realisation. This was really helpful in evidencing the ways in which we see new knowledge with old eyes (with the subconscious filters and lenses through which we are socialised to see the world). So the point is… if we are building radically new attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs that challenge and depart from our old habitual ways of being without first interrogating and deconstructing the old schemas we hold, all we end up doing is co-opting the new to fit with the old — which I literally did in real time with this particular audience member. This is exactly how we’ve seen the push for mental health and wellbeing be co-opted by capitalist logics of maximal production. Workplaces employing Chief Happiness Officers so that employees will be happier so they can work harder and produce more which oftens feeds back into the overworked, over-demanding ways of working which diminish mental health and wellbeing in the first place. A vicious cycle that leads to nothing really changing except the branded ways in which we package knowledge and being. Case in point.
Beyond
So my actions going forward (I am doing action research after all!) are the following:
Practice how to explain my formula for unlearning so that it’s super clear and accessible and therefore even more disputable ;)
Really sit with the possibility of learning and unlearning being the same thing and if it doesn’t stick… work on making my case for unlearning as distinct to conventional learning much stronger.
That’s all she wrote!
Want to see how Radicational is coming to life? Stay tuned for my next article: Radicational @ #LXDmeetup London (action research reflections)
If you would like to contribute wisdom/resources, or keep up to date with how Radicational evolves… you can follow the journey on Medium | Website | Instagram
Written and managed by Vanessa Faloye