Earlier this year, I made a decision to leave a job that I love for a new project that I have wanted to nourish for a long time. Returning to academia has got me reflecting actively on what I do and don’t want from this space. I decided to write a research manifesto for myself, inspired by the Lambeth Community Research Network Charter as well as a feminist writing group I attended during my PhD where we made manifestos as a way to imagine new worlds and words. Originally I just wrote the manifesto down on a big piece of card in the garden, but since starting this Substack I decided to type it up here.
I went for a first autumn walk and it made me feel like new beginnings and fresh stationery and new books. I’m thinking about all the children who don’t get to go back to school this year, who won’t be getting crisp exercise books or a new pencil set. What are we doing?
I’ve started adding a ‘make your own manifesto’ section to any writing workshop/coaching session I lead, partly because I love hearing people boldly articulate their principles and motivations and passions.
In the garden, I saw a tree whose trunk is knotted together like fingers, like veins, like my brain trying to process more than one sound or thought at a time; yet also unable to function without multiple conversations and directions.
This manifesto is a flow of entwined branches. I think it will be good to revisit them over the next few years.
Write what matters. What matters?
‘Nothing about us without us is for us’.
Organisations and hierarchical structures are only ever the means. As soon as they become the end, you’ve come to the end.
Who is this for? Who is this not for? Why?
Teaching = learning/learning = teaching.
Whose voices are not being heard?
L I S T E N !
What’s your focus? [my list in this moment: improvisation, music and health, creative health, creative methods, trees, birds, participatory research, health inequalities, healing justice, decolonisation/decoloniality, the present day relevance of how we tell histories, singing, feminism, Islam and muslims, disability justice]
When was the last time you and the people you work with sang or told a story?
Time. How are you using it?
Rosehips shoot up into the sky. Some look back down at the earth and see us.
Did this make you think of writing a research/writing manifesto?
Share it with me please, I’d love to read it!
(you can email it to me flahham993@gmail.com or DM on instagram @fictionalfatima).