Autumn Skillshare 2023 – Skills im Tank 2.0

A weekend of workshops and networking, reflection and action! Organized by Skills for Utopia and Zucker im Tank, with additional workshops by DW Enteignen and the Antira Support Groups Network. Participation is free, as always with us.

Registration

Just let us know at s4u@systemli.org which workshops you would like to attend. Also let us know if you need a place to stay, if you have allergies or food intolerances, or if there is anything else you need in order to participate well.

17:30 – 20:00 Workshops (for workshop description click on arrows)

To plan and carry out an action can be exciting, beautiful, stressful, empowering, funny, frustrating, scary, confusing, connecting and many other things.
Together with you, we want to talk about how actions can be prepared for and followed up on an emotional level. Which emotions play a role in our political work, why are they important and how can we support each other?

The workshop first provides an overview of the process: from arrest, the time in the prison collection center (Gesa) to the prison sentence in jail. Then we try together to develop possible strategies for dealing with the police and with the stay in solitary cells.

The workshop is unfortunately cancelled due to illness..

09:00 – 10:00 Breakfast

10:00 – 13:30 Workshops (for workshop description click on the arrows)

In this workshop, participants share and reflect on personal experiences. The following questions are guiding: What does whiteness mean to you, how do you feel when you think about it? How much do you benefit from this privilege, consciously and unconsciously? How has your whiteness shaped your personal life path? How can you use your white privilege to critique racism?

Participants will expand their knowledge of their whiteness and find new ways to reflect whiteness more deeply in their lives. We will also look at the impact of racism. How do we change power structures and what role does self-reflection play in these processes?

Wirya Budaghi is a trainer, activist and performance artist born in 1979 in Kurdistan, Iran. He describes himself as a “non-citizen”. Because of his creative practice, which for him is always also a political one, he had to flee Iran. Today he lives and works in Berlin. With his body he addresses state violence and military attacks, the right to mother tongue, migration, racism and colonial connections.

Traditional masculinity has long been critically reflected in social movements. Nevertheless, even today, forms of action are unquestioningly aligned with masculine norms, or we encounter hero stories in the follow-up to actions. Activism, through its social practice, history, and political structure, continues to be often masculinized. We will discuss this together through individual, small and large group reflections. In doing so, we will emphasize a cautious and error-friendly collective approach.

We will look at queer struggles in the past and present. Which past struggles inspire us, which queer issues still exist today, and what can actions for them look like. The workshop will be interactive and playful. No prior knowledge is required. The workshop will focus on queer perspectives, but non-queer people are also welcome.

13:30 – 15:30 Lunch

15:30 – 19:00 Open Space: reflection, skillshares, exchanges (DE/EN)

The Support Groups Network provides tips on starting anti-racist support groups.

19:00 – Open End Dinner & Hanging out

09:00 – 10:00 Breakfast

10:00 – 13:30 Workshops (for workshop descriptions click on arrows)

There is no other world. There is only another way to live, to work, to organize. This workshop is an introduction to self-organization: What does hierarchy criticism mean? How should projects or groups be designed to be more “hierarchy-critical”? Last but not least, there are some concrete examples for more hierarchy criticism in your own project, and lots of materials for further work.

In this encounter space, participants will discuss Colonial-Patriarchal-Capitalist systemic Power structures and how their mechanisms work. We will review political alternatives posed by community territorial FLINTA defenders and will collectively imagine contextual alternatives for resistance and transformation through bodily, vocal and visual performative strategies in the space.

What small group actions (from spray chalk actions to blockades of excavators) are possible? How can such an action proceed and which tasks are to be distributed? The workshop is designed to teach the skills necessary to plan and carry out your own actions.

13:30 – 15:30 Lunch

Open Space

For Saturday afternoon we have planned an open space session. That means: You determine the topics & the content. No matter if you want to organize an exchange, a skillshare or a reflection session – you decide on the content and the framework, we provide the rooms.

Location

Our autumn skillshare 2023 will take place in the seminar house of Inwole. This is at Rudolf-Breitscheid-Straße 164 in Potsdam, with the S-Bahn station Griebnitzsee very close by. There is also the possibility to stay overnight there.

Barriers

The location is accessible via the S-Bahn stations Griebnitzsee (on foot / in a wheelchair) and Babelsberg (by streetcar or on foot / in a wheelchair). Both stations have elevators and guidance systems for the blind. There are no guide systems for the blind leading to the location itself. Assistance would be needed here, but after prior notification we would organize a pick-up service here.

In the location itself there is no guidance system for blind people, but we would support here as well. One workshop room as well as the bar is accessible by ramp and without assistance by wheelchair. Another workshop room is not accessible by wheelchair due to the stairs. The building of a last workshop room is accessible by ramp and only with outside help, because the associated staircase is very steep. Here we would assist with access. The workshop room as well as the bathrooms, kitchen and overnight rooms within the house are again accessible without outside assistance.

Language

The events will be held in German, except for the “Counter-Power Propositions” workshop on Sunday. If you wish to attend but need assistance understanding German, we will try to organize whisper translations. As this depends on local volunteers, we cannot guarantee it for all slots.

KüfA

There will be food for donation! Saturday at noon & evening and Sunday at noon. So please bring your own breakfast.

Sleeping

Please let us know in advance if you need a place to sleep for the weekend, and if so, for how many nights (Fri-Sat or Fri-Sun). We will rent dormitories depending on your needs.