CTM project's Reflection Workshop in Tbilisi

At TEH Camp Meeting in Tbilisi this October, CTM project's engagement was not confined to hosting the knowledge roundtable. Under the guidance of Laura Camacho Salgado, TEH and 4 CTM project partners immersed themselves in a collective reflection workshop titled “Unlearning the status quo”.

The reflection workshop is an annual CTM event that brings together reflection workshop facilitator and the artists-of-change or # AoC from participating cultural centers-of-change or #CoC in Belgium, Italy, Austria and Ukraine. The artists-of-change will closely collaborate with the local underrepresented communities.

This October marked the inaugural in-person meeting of #AoC and Laura, who will be facilitating reflection workshops in the coming years. They shared backgrounds, learned from each other, and collectively developed a reflection on unlearning the status quo. Other TEH members were warmly invited to partake in the reflection workshop, as the theme strongly resonates with all cultural centres within the TEH network. Participants agreed that a new approach to social justice and diversity is imperative. To achieve this, understanding the starting point is crucial. Participants were prompted to brainstorm answers to three pivotal questions:

• What should stay or what should we keep? 
• What should we transform?
• What should we unlearn?

The workshop stressed the importance of unlearning ingrained habits, specifically embracing new ways of approaching privilege, complexity, trust. The participants discussed the necessity of engaging in dialogues on the same level to dismantle existing power structures, as well as of reshaping how we listen to voices and generally perceive the concept of voice. Breaking away from repeating the same mistake, that means going into the same discussions within the same familiar groups, was mentioned as an important step on the way to social justice.