System Change, Power and Resource Use

Developing common analysis and action for environmental justice issues

Event large

Friends of the Earth Europe will be bringing some of the techniques and insights from our "School of Sustainability" project to the Degrowth Summer School 2016, with a course on System Change, Power and Resource Use.
The course will focus on (social) reflective skills. We will be developing common analysis and action that can be applied to a wide range of environmental justice issues, including degrowth, and resource use & consumption.
We will look at how we experience and work with power as domination, resistance, solidarity, and empowerment.
The course will use techniques of popular education to equip participants with tools that can be used to analyse and engage with power in our societies, in our work for system change, in our movements, and within ourselves.

Schedule:
Session 1 will help us to get to know each other, set our expectations for the course, and agree ways of working together. It will include exercises to help us look at what "power" is, and how we experience and recognize it at many level- in our societies, in our work for system change and social change, in our organisations and movements, and within ourselves.
We will use methods from image theatre, and other physical exercises, as well as space for individual and small group reflections. If it's useful, we can look at some theory as well.

Session 2 will look in more detail at power within society, and the institutions and actors we are seeking to challenge. Working in small groups, we will work with tools that will help us to understand dominant power relations in relation to the resource use crisis, and how we can change them. We will explore campaigning tools that might be useful for challenging these power relations.

Session 3 will look in more detail at power within our movements and especially issues of power & privilege. We will use approaches inspired by popular education, in order to understand the positions we have as individuals and activists, and the extent to which our organisations, networks and organisations reflect and/or challenge dominant power relations.

In session 4, we'll be ready for action, developing campaign plans, plans to build more inclusive and diverse movements, or interventions to carry out during the summer school, helping us to take action which is rooted in a deeper understanding of the issues at stake.

Target group:
The course is aimed at participants with a background in movements working for environmental and social justice, or people interested in engaging in these movements.