We are a small but mighty collective of people who believe another world is possible.
Our vision
We envision a society where all people can thrive, regardless of the contexts or identities we are born into.
For us, thriving means living with safety, acceptance, dignity, peace, joy, comfort, rest, connection and opportunities for growth.
We want to build something better for all of us, together.
We are dedicated to helping people who care about other people create more socially equitable and inclusive spaces — by challenging norms in order to catalyze positive change in teams, organizations, movements and society at large.
Our intention
Our values
Complexity and nuance
Compassionate accountability
Acceptance over understanding
Impact over intent
Social equity
Empathy and respect
Intersectionality and multiplicity
Authenticity
Not sure what we mean by these words?
Book a discovery call > to find out more about how we work.
Acknowledgements
Our work is only possible because of the leagues of activists, community organizers, teachers, somatic practitioners, spiritual leaders, mediators, facilitators and others who have come before us. This is why we share a resource sheet for every workshop we present — so that participants of our programmes have the chance to continue their own daily (un)learning from those who inspired and taught us.
We would like to express our gratitude to all those Black, Indigenous and POC women and genderqueer people, people with disabilities, working and poverty class people, people of non-normative body types or abilities, incarcerated and detained people, neurodivergent people, queer people, sex workers, people without passports or residents status, and everyone who lives and cares for each other at the margins of our societies, who have shared their wisdom and experiences to shape new worlds.
Nice to meet you
We are the three active members of the aequa Workshops Collective. We also work with a range of collaborators, from sensitivity readers to learning designers to transformative justice teachers to measurement specialists.
We bring with us our various lived experiences — we strive to show up as our whole selves to our work as often as we’re able to do so. And we want to create space for our participants to do the same.
co-founder, facilitator, programme designer
facilitator,
learning designer
co-founder, facilitator, programme designer
Our story
This collective was born in part from our own need for belonging. Our lived experiences shape and inform each and every part of our work. We share the common goal of fostering visibility, participation, success and belonging of marginalised folks in all areas of society.
Holding space for each other and our participants — each in our individual humanity, while building collective power — strengthens us and makes us unique.
Our story started pretty simply. In 2018, two of our founders — jarral and Sarj — were introduced in order to collaborate on a workshop about active allyship. Sarj hosted community workshop spaces and jarral was introduced as a great facilitator, and the two quickly discovered a shared passion for creating empathy-centered, body-aware, conversation-heavy safer workshop spaces for people to dialogue about some of the harder topics we are dealing with as a culture.
The WoCo was officially born in May 2020, together with three other co-founders: Kes Otter Lieffe, Elizabeth Thamm and Heidi Higginbottom. Due to the lockdown, the freshly-opened aequa Community Centre was closed, and so Sarj was looking for other ways to sustain the community space financially during the lockdown. As the aequa community and many others were still looking for ways to learn, connect and grow online, a group of five facilitators and learning designers came together — and thus, the aequa Workshops Collective was born.
From 2020 to early 2023, the aequa Workshops Collective was the primary source of income that kept this community space afloat through the ups and downs of the first years of the Corona pandemic, making it possible for activists, community organisers, volunteers and people who care across a range of inter social justice movements — for example migrant justice, transformative justice, queer liberation, prison abolition, and sex workers’ rights — to meet, share space and build community.
In March 2023, the community decided it was time for the aequa Community Centre to close, and we are currently in a restructuring period — Project Phoenix — that separates the Workshops Collective from the physical community space. We think this is the best way for both sides of the project to sustainably develop while being true to our multiple missions.
We’re excited to see what happens next, and we hope you are too.
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