FCE's Summer Gathering and 10 Year Anniversary: Thank you!

We wanted to wish everyone who attended our Summer Gathering and 10 Year Anniversary a huge thank you, you helped us make the event a great success! It was a fantastic afternoon of celebrations, reflection and looking forward at our hopes for the future.

We were lucky 77 participants on the day, sharing equally the event and unequally the cakes. Our invites went out to our clients, partners, volunteers and staff from 10 years ago all up to now and it was truly unique to be able to host all at the same time for once.

A very special thank you to Ray Kelly, who kept us entertained with a great live performance!  We will make sure to book more quiet time to in the next so we can listen and engage properly with all songs.

Ray’s book (see right) is available at Up the Castle and Beyond: We're a' Jock Tamson's Bairns (at amazon).

We also wanted to say a thank you to all the kind words from the audience, including from (Roy Lawrence, Head of Culture, Engagement & Communities at Fife Health and Social Care; Sandra Morris, CEO of Fife Carers Centre, Funk Lawal, Founder of Africans in Fife, Ann Thalon, Kirkcaldy Hard of Hearing Group, Chantal Mrimi from Fife Council and the Fife Women's Tent, and last but not least Gordon Andrew and Nony Mordi from the FCE Board of trustees).

Discussions:

As the core part of the afternoon, we time discussing our hopes for the future of equality and fairness in Fife, current and emerging concerns and barriers, as well as how we can work better as partners and communities across Fife.

From our discussions, we found that across everyone in the room, we were hopeful about changing dynamics when connecting with others, anecdotally, people had found that they felt more comfortable sharing and discussing their differences with others, embracing “difficult” conversations whilst being safe.

One group had mentioned how encouraging it was to see so many organisations, community groups and individuals in the same room, all working towards making Fife fairer for all.

There was a lot of positivity surrounding Fife! We aren’t perfect here, but the discussions highlighted how open, welcoming and empowering the people of Fife are, with many examples of the support given by new and lifelong Fifers alike.

There were concerns raised across the tables, the most prominent theme throughout was the rise in online hate, and how social media can be weaponised to attack vulnerable groups and spread misinformation within communities.

A concern was shared regarding reasonable adjustments, and how equalities is often seen as a “tick-box” exercise as opposed to being built into the core of service delivery.

An interesting point was made regarding reconnecting with communities and individuals, organisations are often dealing with clients and other organisations that are “in the know” when it comes to equalities and inclusion, how do we safely reach out to those who are outside of the equality, diversity and inclusion space?

This was mirrored when we discussed working better together, it was unanimous across the board that there was a need for in-person connections in safe “third” spaces, moving away from online consultation and surveys.

To compliment this, there was a need for spaces for people to discuss and expose people to differences in opinion or circumstances and allow people to ask questions without fear of making a mistake.

Do you have any hopes, or concerns for equality and fairness in Fife? We are asking for your feedback and experiences to help us shape the next 10 years at Fife Centre for Equalities.

Click the link below to see what we asked!

 Fife Centre for Equalities Summer Gathering & 10 Year Anniversary Feedback – Fill in form

To download a copy of the presentation slides from the event, please click on the hotlink below:

FCESG26.pdf

Download PDF • 971KB

Looking Back:

We have at FCE, over the past year, worked with and listened to our board, partners, clients and also funders to discuss journey as a local equalities hub from beginnings in 2016 (although FCE started prior to this as a project hosted at FVA, we became a charity in 2016) to now. Looking back at the wider equalities landscape of then, we can see how we were hopeful, with the integration of the Human Rights Act 1998 in Scotland; the promises of the Equality Act 2010 and of ‘mainstreaming equality’ across the UK.

The reality, as local charity, turned out to be quite different – in many ways both communities and authorities saw with reason the Equality Act 2010 as a diluting of crucial and necessary areas such as disability rights or antiracist practice. Equalities hubs were susceptible of being a cheap way of ‘adding some equality at the end’ rather actually involving the most affected minoritised community from the start of crucial service design and delivery. The Human Rights Act 1998 for many people we engaged with was something ‘out there’ out of reach and hard to access - unless you already had enough social capital at hand to access their promise.

Reflections from practitioners at all levels of equality and inclusion in services, as well as from communities, was that there was a huge between the shiny policies, action plan and frameworks and reality and user experience. In many ways, a very blunt approach to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI, or sometimes written DEI).

One infographic that captured those reflections in just one pictures is that from Rufsana Begum and the Unshamed Leadership course:

·         Focusing on identity over individuality – e.g. when the person centred approach gets dropped to instead group people under a block ‘protected characteristic’

·         Confusing equality with equality – e.g. treat everyone the same does not mean this is always fair

·         Encouraging groupthink and silencing diverse perspectives – e.g. when safe spaces become echo chambers

·         Prioritising policies over people – e.g. when the shiny brochure becomes more important than the actual people culture

·         Focusing on numbers instead of impact – e.g. when metrics, stats and data take over and do no relate to actual change

·         Creating dependency instead of empowerment – e.g. when every client interaction becomes a referral or signposting, rather than empowering at the base

·         Making discomfort the enemy – e.g. avoiding honesty, and leading to people having to mask or hide what matters to them

·         Perpetuating a victim mentality – e.g. when past injustices and grudges keep being projected and keep people stuck in the past and not the now

·         Measuring what’s easy, not what matters – e.g. when ‘we need the numbers’ takes over and misses the crucial steps that are hard to count

·         Dividing instead of uniting – e.g. when emphasis on difference forgets the common purpose.

A great saying which illustrate this last point is as below:

-          “A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon.” (source: zen teachings about direct experience)

Next Steps for FCE:

This last point matters the most, and at FCE we are firmly working on how we can create common ground, recognise in each how much more we have common than apart, and how to bring about a better approach to equality, diversity and inclusion that meets the current moment.

The learning from the infographic, is simple:

-          Ask better questions, listen more – e.g. our community research activity

-          Build real relationships – e.g. our forum and gathering

-          Create cultures of respect and accountability – e.g. our equality pathfinders experience-based learning

-          Empower everyone to contribute and grow – e.g. through opening opportunities at all levels

Our commitment to people who live, work and study in Fife is a simple three-point plan:

•       The FCE Team will be your dedicated ‘community listeners’ – we will ask more searching questions and listen. This will involve growing our capacity for research, peer research and community connections.

•       We will act even more as a connecting hub, space for forums, roundtables and projects to grow – we will never appropriate, but empower equality groups to build fair outcomes for all

•       We will challenges ourselves, as we challenge our partners, and up our game by developing even further Fife’s unique approach and expertise on inclusion. We will do this for the National Standards of Community Engagement and by developing as professionals with the CLD Standards Council approach.

We already have a range of projects to get involved with, join our conversations, feedback your thoughts, concerns, and hopes for equality in Fife as we work together other the next 10 years.

FCE Team.