On the 18th ob March we’ve held an online seminar (dissemination event) “The End of the Story”… for a three year project “Depth Education for Youth (DEFY): Building resilience in the face of the climate crisis” or shorter ‘DEFY‘
At the event we broke down the story in three parts, sharing our experience and journey of co-creating spaces for educators to explore their own entanglement with ‘difficult-knowledge’ and the discomfort that arises. Throughout the project we’ve been interested in how going towards this ‘trouble’ might prepare us to hold more space for others.
Our three-part sharing represented the three years of working with difficult knowledge and discomfort, exploring our capacity to open and hold space as educators and the three resources that were co-created within the project with and by educators.
DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE = knowledge that we might find uncomfortable, both for the painful and traumatic material of the actual content but also because it makes demands on us, asking us to analyse our own beliefs and values as well as our relationship and entanglement with injustices and violence (Deborah Britzman, psychoanalyst and professor)
The project was geared towards educators working with young people on questions of social and ecological injustice and explored discomfort, difficult-knowledge and elephants-in-the-room.
The DEFY project produced several resources for educators, including 2 zines and a handbook on navigating difficult-knowledge and discomfort. You can find these resources on the links below.
ZINE 1: The Story So Far: Exploring Our Capacity to Open and Hold Space as Educators
DEFY was exploring the role of discomfort, “elephants in the room,” and emotion in learning spaces. This zine was developed over several months through shared reflection with educators, gathering their insights and experiences on these themes.
ZINE 2: Shifting Edges: Exploring Our Capacity to Open and Hold Space as Educators
This reflective, exploratory and tentative zine carries texts that emerged through Shifting Edges, an offering for educators exploring difficult-knowledge and discomfort.
Handbook: Navigating Difficult-Knowledge and Discomfort
This handbook is based on our experiences with DEFY spaces, including monthly deep dives, journaling seminars, conversation circles and Shifting Edges, an extended DEFY journey for educators.
*DEFY was the initiative of organisations working in the field of Global Citizenship Education. However, anyone working in education and social change, in any setting, was welcome to DEFY as long as the themes resonated.
