This used to be a section on the About Page but has since been updated as 'The RYSE's journey do far!' - so we thought we'd put them here as an archive - enjoy!
XR Youth Protests - April 2019
We can't talk about educational moments without discussing the work we did in organising XR Youth's involvement in the April Rebellion of 2019 - just 2 months after our Robin helped found XR Youth. This is learning in its rawest form and the mindset shifts that can occur when our power is realised in this way cannot be underestimated - these are moments of stepping off the path, moving from dissonance to disobedience and stepping into our power. All our educational work cannot be seperated from the physical struggle for power as this is when our bodies step into the space our minds have opened and take us running beyond what we thought was possible.
Non-Violent Direct Action trainings - April 2019
There's nothing like running NVDA tranings right next to the roads you are intending to block - this was Day 2 of the April Rebellion and we were training up those youth who joined us ready to shut down Piccadilly Circus for a 2nd day.
There is something about running radical workshops in public spaces that we find to be a deep challenge to how our generation have been taught to show up publically. To stake claim to space and use it for our learning is a transformative experience and The RYSE will definitely be supporting youth to both take space and use it!
Afrikan Emancipation Day - Intro to Reparations with Esther Stanford-Xosei - June 2019
Through our linking with the XR Internationalist Solidarity Network we organised this talk in the XR London office. Esther was joining not just as part of XRISN but also as lead spokesperson for the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign who have been a leading light in the ongoing Pan-Afrikan struggle for Reparatory Justice. We had over 20 XR Youth members come along and the talk is still on Youtube and is a must watch!
Wisdom session with Jarmbi - July 2019
We were lucky enough to participate in a wisdom grounding session with the incredible Jarmbi, an Aboriginal wisdom keeper from so-called Australia.
He yarned with us, and other members of XR Youth Bristol, about Aboriginal wisdom traditions and how they link with his understandings of healing, trauma and activism. It was another moment of direct challenge to Western universalism and there was nothing like seeing a rugged 6ft2 demin shirt wearing man talking so vulnerably about trauma to inspire us on our own healing journies. These concepts of linking non-dualist spirituality into our work as youth in resistance is key we feel to restoring connection and supporting our resilience.
XR UK Strategy Processes - August 2019
Freya, Robin and Nils (founding RYSE memebrs) all spent time working on national strategy processes within our work as XR Youth Reps. Now we can't say these processes were easy, or even that enjoyable, but we learnt a huge amount about constructing movement strategy, weaving story and action together; and much more. These are key experiences that we've used in developing our own strategies and learning we will be bringing - alongside movement elders - when running residentials.
XR Youth Training Weekend - September 2019
We ran workshops on protest classics like Know Your Rights and NVDA as well as premiering our Exploring Solidarity workshop which we've gone onto use dozens of times in different spaces. Bringing together young people nationally for a weekend and create an open learning environment was a great challenge and experience for us to build on when hosting our residentials.
Flourishing Diversity Conference - September 2019
We helped bring the Flourishing Diversity conference to London and ensured an engaged and active youth contingent for the event.
The chance to dialogue with indigenous representatives from across the world, to have such strong challenges to our inherited world views and to connect with radical academics was a foundational experience in our journies away from Western modernity thinking. We'll be bringing this necessity for listening to and learning from indigneous people and wisdom traditions into our work - these are true elders.
Global Justice Rebellion Site - October 2019
Robin, Meg and Nils were instrumental in bringing the Global Justice Rebellion Site (GJRS) to the XR October Rebellion back in 2019 - Robin as site coordinator and Meg as youth lead.
Together they worked with the GJRS team to occupy space in London for 2 weeks and host dozens of educational talks, film screenings and workshops - discussing topics from urban rewilding to Indigenous understandings of Rebellion. We made many allies, caused some wonderful chaos and went on a steep learning curve around how to host off grid learning spaces which will be essential for our fieldwork and Summer season's with The RYSE.
'What is School?' Workshops - Spring 2020
Part of our initial set of workshops back in 2020, Robin and Meg ran this session more than 10 times with young people from across the UK - designed as a dialogue session to help us see schooling as a system of power it proved a great space to create resonance around young people's feelings and ideas.
We learnt a lot about how to create spaces of perspective on the schooling system - learning which we've built on and developed throughout RR and will be central to our work within the RYSE. See the School is a Crime Scene Zine to read some of the output!
Momentum Driven Organising Series - Spring 2020
Run by Nils and Edda this was a 5 workshop series on Momentum Driven Organising - the theory behind Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise Movement and more. In particular this was a chance for key skill sharing and growing our collective understanding around the underlying understandings of protest and movement building that are always at play but often under discussed. These understandings of change are core to our work and will be present in The RYSE's work going forward.
Exploring Solidarity Workshop - Spring 2020
This is definitely our most popular workshop - designed by Robin in the summer of 2019, it was our first truly dialogical workshop based on the teachings of Paulo Freire and asks participants to co-create a working defintion of solidarity through both dissecting quotes and their own experience.
We've learnt a lot about creating both in person and online dialogical sessions through the running and evolution of this workshop - learnings that are central to how we will work within The RYSE to create spaces of transformative dialogue, not to mention embedding our learned understandings of solidarity in everything we do!
What even is Youth anyways? - Spring 2020
This is the final slide from another of our key lockdown workshops - ran around a dozen times we used this session to help young people better understand the role and power of youth in society.
Core learning here was to see how little space is given in our lives to dialogue about age as a key part of the social picture - esp about how little we work in complementary ways between different ages, inviting out the gifts of youth and elders for example - it was a really important space for young people to step into a belief that they don't need to wait to be 'adults' to be useful but can stand in our power already!
Bustcard Zine - Spring/Summer 2020
Bustcard is a youth led zine that produced 4 incredible issues back in 2020. We're lucky enough that one of the leaders behind the project Freya is our Media Co-ord and all around propaganda maestro! Link here will take you to our Zine Gallery page where you can see the work she did while with THe RYSE!
Radical Restart Camp - August 2020
Our first big in person gathering as Radical Restart (name of the collective before The RYSE was formed) was a beautiful 2 weeks back in the Summer of 2020. With 20 young people taking part it was an incredible chance to ground our work in our collective experiences and dive much deeper into our concepts of youth identity and mis-education.
We learnt a huge amount about organising in person gatherings, running multi-day processes and all the challenges that come with living in such wonderfully entangled ways. We wrote a load of blogs while there and so follow the link below if you want to read more - link here!
The Chaos Workshops - Autumn 2020
An amazing series of workshops on Chaos Theory hosted by ourselves and our friends at XR Youth Solidarity - we've got a whole page talking about the series so hit the link and check it out!
Transformative Justice Process - Dec 2020 to June 2021
We've got a whole page on this so won't right anymore here. It was a huge piece of deeply important work that we did our best at as a team and we invite you all to hit the link here and check it out all the resources for yourself.
Building a conflict system with Navigate - Spring 2021
Huge shout out here to our friends at Navigate - in particular Roz - who held a series of workshops for us on building a conflict system. It was a great chance to learn from some of the UK's leading systems design team. We spent sessions designing our own conflict system, and have taken this learning into other teams, for example XR Youth Solidarity.
Our understanding of and approach to conflict has broadened immensely- being able to meet tensions and difficulty with curiosity and care has hugely shifted what has felt possible for us in our organising, and how we work alongside other groups.
Conflict Transformation Learning Circle - June 2021
Edda and J (Ex-RYSE legends!) ran this session with XR Youth Solidarity, to explore transformative ideas of conflict, and the specific context of the team. It was a challenging session- to ask people to push their boundaries and be vulnerable in a group session, but it was invaluable experience as facilitators.
Learning to prioritise group culture building work and sustainable practises is foundational to what education means to us. This session was a marker of that intention- our commitment to challenging our inherited ways of working, and practice getting uncomfortable!
From Dissonance to Disobedience Workshop - June 2021
The culmination of 6 months of campaign planning and narrative building this was our first step in launching the Disobey movement - our attempt to launch a youth-led radical struggle against mis-education. Sadly we've put the wider Disobey campaign on hold while we build The RYSE but this was a beautiful day with our community and the ideas around Dissonance to Disobedience will be baked into everything we do going forward.
To learn more about this workshop then Motivations Learning Circle - July 2021!
Motivations Learning Circle - July 2021
This session was designed by Robin, for an XRYouth Solidarity learning circle, open to the wider youth activist community. It was all about exploring our deeper motivations for activist work Intellectualism Learning Circle - July 2021- what pushes us forwards, both healthy and unhealthy.
Intellectualism Learning Circle - July 2021
A favoured activity of our Meg is to call out 'long wordy bullshit' that only serves to inflate the ego of the speaker and not really to communicate - we designed this session to dig into this and expose the learnt behaviours (mainly from School!) that so often break down our ability to communicate!
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And there it is - the RYSE was founded in September 2021 and we've been bust ever since developing sessions, organising gatherings and always developing our educational skills and style. If any of these topics really interested you then please do reach out, we're sure we'll be able to dig the resources behind them out and would be more than happy to share!
And like we said at the top, jump on the About page to see 'The RYSE's journey do far!'!
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As always, buzz us any reflections on this through our email (theryse@riseup.net) or on the Insta - love and power family, onwards!