Dear Communities, friends, supporters and everybody interested
Another year is coming to an end and we would like to say goodbye and disappear into our winter break until January 10th, 2022. Also this year, the Covid-19 pandemic has kept us busy and impacted our work.
At the same time, there were also staff changes in xart splittas Team. Sadly, our project manager Iris Rajanayagam has left us after 6 great years together. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Iris for her many years of formative commitment, in which she filled xart splitta with life and created this space for which we are so grateful today. We wish her all the best for her new position.
The Living Archives is an online platform for documenting, archiving and passing on knowledge from and for BIPoC communities.
On November 19th, 2021 we celebrated our first anniversary and on December 17th, 2021 we presented the further developments of the platform with our second launch!
With all warmth, we would like to thank the participants of our two expert workshops for your feedback, time, perspectives and expertise: Iman Attia, Ginnie Bekoe, Fatima El-Tayeb, Hannah Ishmael, Isidora Randjelović, Ismahan Wayah, Jihad Yagoubi, and Iris Rajanayagam in her role as co-founder.
Special thanks here to Nicola Lauré al-Samarai, who has been part of the process since its inception in the frame of the event Passing it on and has actively supported us over the last two years. We are looking forward to filling the project with life in the coming year. Much of the content is already available, some of it in Safer Spaces.
The Living Archives has till now been funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb). Many thanks for their support and here especially to Peggy Piesche, for her guidance and impluse.
Our main project this year was #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken (thinking communities in solidarity) and we are happy to present you some of our highlights.
Here our final event In.Solidarity has gone into the second round!
In.Solidarity – Retrospectives, Insights and Outlooks on Community Cooperation (In.Solidarity – Rückblicke, Einblicke und Ausblicke auf Community-Zusammenarbeit) took place last year in cooperation with the neuen deutschen organisationen (ndo).
This year we were able to cooperate with ComE In of the Migrationsrat Berlin (MRB) and jointly create In.Solidarity II – In Covid, Crisis & Care. Many thanks to the Migrationsrat for this successful cooperation!
After a one-year break due to Corona, we were able to continue our event series Dissolving Territories| cultural geographies of a new eelam with a third season this year.
The third season of “DISSOLVING TERRITORIES” was dedicated to the aspect of solidarity between different oppressed and stateless people: therefore we brought together Eelam-Tamil and Kurdish perspectives and explicitly discussed intersections in relation to experiences in (German) exile.
You can find the documentation here.
A DGS (“German Sign Language”) I and a DGS II course with Diana Spieß and the Lebendige Gebärden team also took place. Provided we receive funding, we hope to be able to offer this course again in 2022.
We are also delighted to present the second part of The Legion of Community Superpowers. Illustrated by Elliot Blue, our Dragos set out to share their wisdom and advice with us! Thanks to Elliot Blue for the wonderful collaboration!
Another highlight this year was the Queer of Colour Critique reading and discussion group, facilitated by Rena Onat and Saida-Mahalia Saad. The joint closing session was especially great, where we were able to welcome Dr. Chandra Frank and Gayatri Gopinath as well as Kathy-Ann Tan as moderator!
Many thanks to the facilitators, moderator, our guests and also to the participants!
We are looking forward to continuing our projects and starting new ones in the coming year, but above all to the dialogue with you, your ideas and your perspectives.
With this, we would like to say goodbye with a warm thank you. Thank you for your support, your feedback, the small and big ones that you have shared with us again this year. We wish you relaxing days off and time to rest and breathe deeply. We look forward to a new year with you and wish you all much strength and all the best for the turn of the year and for 2022.
With best wishes, your xart splitta team
Juli, Therese, Olga and Savira
cover picture: © “Sleepy Head” by son_gismo is licensed under CC BY 2.0