Change making takes time
The 22nd October 2020 saw the first event from Anti Racist Cumbria: Race and Education in Cumbria. There was an incredible turnout, with representation from primary and secondary schools across the county. During the past weeks, the Education Working Group has run follow up sessions with over 40 school ambassadors. Our ambassadors are all educators, working within schools and they have all pledged to work alongside Anti Racist Cumbria to achieve real change for young people.
But achieving change can be a daunting task. There are academics who have written lengthy books on how to go about the task. There are many conflicting approaches to take, each offering different ways to bring others onside, when to lead and when to delegate, and how to approach identifying the challenges that may put your efforts at risk of ever achieving anything. No wonder most people baulk at the thought of taking on anything that demands this wide and varied skillset.
And yet, that is exactly what Anti Racist Cumbria is asking of each of our ambassadors. While we recognise the scale of the challenge, we do not apologise for it; our young people deserve better and we all need to come together to do better. This cannot be delayed any longer.
One of secondary school teachers who attended talked about the impact just one session has had;
It was great to attend the anti-racist Ambassador workshop and be able to join up with other schools and start this journey together. What was most helpful was gaining an understanding of the different terms we use to talk about race and how the acronyms can often be unhelpful. The experiences shared encouraged me to arrange opportunities to meet our black, brown and minoritised students to talk about heritage and identity. I have already started this process. Just having this dialogue with a few students this week has enables me to learn so much more about them as individuals and for them to share in conversation that they may have never had before.
Vicky one of our Education Working Group and a Deputy Head Teacher herself helped facilitate sessions with the schools’ anti-racist ambassadors added;
Optimism and commitment were certainly the overriding attitudes – we’re all excited to see where this journey goes!
The job in hand
When a task feels enormous, it’s helpful to break it down into something that is manageable. The sessions we have run with our dedicated ambassadors this week started that process with an audit tool. Separated out into five different strands of focus, the audit can be used to assess where each school could begin their anti-racism work. To simply become anti-racist overnight is unachievable, but to identify one area of where to begin is easily identifiable.
That is a core message from Anti Racist Cumbria to any individual or organisation who wants to become actively anti-racist. It is a huge task; to change the hearts and minds of so many people will not be realised in any short-term definition of time. But start small, find one thing to work on that will have an impact. You might want to start with yourself – are you educated enough on the subject? Only with real knowledge and understanding can anyone develop the confidence to be able to make changes for others. And then you can make your first steps from there. Our ambassadors have been encouraged to think about smaller things; are their books depicting characters from a range of backgrounds (primary) or black authors and characters’ experiences available in the curriculum (secondary)? Do displays show different skin tones? Are visitors to the school from black, brown and minoritised groups? Go beyond discussions and show representation in varied careers, from science and engineering to ballet, opera and everything in between.
These are all achievable and can start any school on a pathway towards being actively anti-racist. There is so much more to do beyond these small gestures and anti-racism cannot rest on purely tokenistic gesture alone, which these examples could run the risk of being seen as exactly that. Yet, it is a starting place and if we all start somewhere, then moving onto the bigger, more daunting tasks will start to seem more possible.
