"We need space that is not designated as institutional space to be able to talk about the problems with and in institutions.”
—Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Duke University Press, 2012, p.10.

The aim of this workshop is to provide a safe space for connection and solidarity-building between First Nations, Black, Indigenous, women of colour whose work interfaces with higher educational institutions as students, administrative staff and faculty members and invites participants to engage in a discussion around the transformative possibilities of constructing communities in counterspaces that exist in parallel with mainstream institutions.

The workshop will begin with a shared reading of selected texts that have contributed to the critical discourse around embedded power dynamics and politics of exclusion within the academy, including: Aileen Moreton Robinson; Fred Moten; Gloria Anzaldúa; Julietta Singh; Linda Tuhiwai Smith; Sara Ahmed and Tatiana De La Tierra. All readings will be provided and there is no expectation to read the texts before the workshop. Excerpts will be read to the group for reflection and discussion. Participants are also invited to bring texts to the workshop that have sustained them through their journey in academia.

Following a series of shared readings, participants will be invited to contribute to the production of a collaborative document, intended as a guide with advice and strategies for survival in the academy drawing from the lived experiences of workshop participants. The guide will be printed and distributed along with the disorganising project publication which will be launched in late July.

This workshop is presented by the Community Reading Room (CRR). CRR is a pop-up destination for research, community discussion and engagement with ideas about art, culture and identity. Founded by Fijian-Australian artist and academic Torika Bolatagici in 2013, the CRR is an experimental discursive project that invites the public to consider how mainstream institutions and public collections privilege particular methodologies and ways of knowing. Each iteration of the CRR evolves from the previous installation and responds to the space in which it is located.