What does food mean to you?🌶️
Submissions now open for our upcoming zine, transformative justice reading circle this month and meet our founder!
Like what you read? Share it with your friends! ❤️
Listen to an audio version of our newsletter here 🌻
Hi folks,
How are we? It’s been a while since I checked in. The season has changed, the leaves are crunchy, pumpkin spice lattes are back; yes, this is what I’ve been waiting for. I’m making it an intention to slow down for the rest of the year and be more mindful with the way I spend my time and energy. It’s something we’ve been speaking about at The Rights Collective, particularly using our time for the things that we value.
One of these things is our flagship zine project which is back, with an exciting instalment focused on food! The team is thrilled to get started on this and we want to read, watch, and be in awe of all your food-related adventures. We also have some other cool interactive components for the zine this year, further details soon!
In solidarity,
Habiba💗
🥟SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR ZINE, ISSUE 8: FOOD🍜🫑
Issue 8 of the zine is an exploration of FOOD!
Food is central to our lives and has endless different meanings to each of us. Through this zine, we hope to gather writing, art, and more from our wider community on our relationships to food; how it nourishes our minds and bodies individually, as well as bonding us to our closest friends and chosen family.
We know that food is so much more than just sustenance. From the creation of shared traditions, memories, and relationships to revealing the realities of economic disparity, hunger and malnutrition, exoticisation, and othering, so much of ourselves is reflected in acts of food preparation. Whether we follow a recipe or intuition, slow cook, pressure cook, or stir fry, roast or bake, we can see who we are, where we grew up, and to whom we trace our ancestry. In other words, food is thoroughly cultural.
What can I submit?
We are asking for your stories about food: what you love, what you hate, the meals you quickly gather together to feed yourself after a busy workday. Who taught you how to cook these meals? Which memories of family meals have stayed with you? What reflections can you share on experiences of not having enough food? How elaborate can your dinner parties get? What’s your potluck go-to? What’s your favourite meal deal combo?
For full guidance on how to submit see www.therightscollective.com/food-zine.
Transformative Justice Reading Circle 📖
Our Transformative Justice Reading Circle starts soon! Join us in for an introduction session to learn more about this collective peer learning and discussion space where we will be exploring abolitionist frameworks of justice and accountability.
Discussions will centre the South Asian experience but everyone is welcome to attend to explore how themes resonate with you and your communities.
This is a hybrid format with the opportunity to transfer theory to practice!
Introductory session: 27 September 2022, 6pm - 8 pm, Zoom
Ansuni Stories: Illustrator Call Out 🖌
Since the start of 2020, The Rights Collective has been working both internally and with members of our community to research the histories and legacies of South Asian Collectivist Culture.
Ansuni Stories is a storytelling project, collating lived experiences of collectivism generously shared by members of our community. This information was gathered over the summer of 2020 via a qualitative survey and a workshop, and has since been informed by ongoing research and work undertaken by members of our team at The Rights Collective. We are now looking to share what we've learnt and bring our findings to the community.
We are looking for someone to work with us to:
Ideate creative ways to present our research in a visually engaging way
Design/illustrate a set number of stories in line with this.
This work will be paid - amount to be decided together. If you have any questions, get in touch with Shanika!
Deadline: 16 October 2022
Meet our team! 👩🏽💻
Meet Nishma, director and co-founder of The Rights Collective
Nishma (she/they) is a facilitator, educator and activist who has been organising for liberation and working to build anti-oppressive spaces for the last 10 years. She is originally from London with roots and community in Gujarat and Mumbai. For the past three years, Nishma has been working to lead and support organisational and community development, build and deliver training curricula rooted in feminist and anti-oppressive practice, and frame programs to advance gender justice, labour rights and feminist tech. She has a background in law with a specific interest in critically looking at punitive and individualistic approaches to harm, conflict and abuse. She is an abolitionist and she facilitates accountability and generative conflict processes for her community.
1. What book are you currently reading? I am reading Yoke: My Yoga of Self Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley. It was actually a beautiful birthday gift from a fellow TRC member and it's really been an easy, comforting and opening read for me over the last few weeks.
2. What is one gift you want to share with the world? This extract from a poem by John O'Donohue:
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day,
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
3. What is your favourite thing about The Rights Collective? The warmth, understanding and love with you are collectively and individually accepted for who you are - even in conflict and frustrations people try to really see and hear you. It is so unique and I hold it dearly.
📚Things we’re engaging with right now…
This beautiful poem by June Jordan:- ‘Good poems can interdict a suicide, rescue a love affair, and build a revolution in which speaking and listening to somebody becomes the first and last purpose to every social encounter.’
‘We are living in a traumatising and uncertain world’- Dr Sanah Ahsan’s piece for The Guardian on mental health is a must read.
🚀 Events we’re attending…
The Crick Crack Club are putting on a musical and dance performance on Goddess Kali at the British Museum! Tickets cost £10 and can be purchased here.
Lecturer Xine Yao and black feminist writer Lola Olufemi will be in conversation on Race, Gender and Affect as part of UCL’s Perspectives on Racialisation, Gender and Feminist Methodologies. Book your free ticket here.
Arundhati Roy will be in conversation with Farzana Khan of Healing Justice London later this month at Conway Hall.
Most of our spaces, workshops and events are free but if you feel called to contribute to the community and invest in sustaining our work, please donate here.