One year on, we share Dr Paula Serafini's blog about working with the Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans (FALA) on a series of events on ecofeminisms. Dr Serafini is Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary.
Photo taken by Paula Serafini at the in-person event.
In January 2023, I collaborated with the Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans (FALA) on a series of events on ecofeminisms titled “Ecofeminisms: Learnings from Latin America- Abya Yala.” The project emerged in 2022 when members of FALA identified a need and desire to learn more about the relationship between feminism and struggles for land, a safe environment and the preservation of ecosystems in the midst of an ecological crisis. This is a topic I had worked on recently as part of a project on the role of art in resistance to the extractive industries.
The aim of the project was to work in partnership with FALA to increase its member’s and the wider community’s understanding of the intersections between women’s struggles and environmental and territorial movements at the frontlines, to better equip them in their own feminist and environmental work and solidarity efforts. In addition, the project was also an opportunity to co-design and test out a new format for transnational community learning. As we developed the project, we were also joined by London Mining Network, an organisation that supports communities affected by UK mining companies abroad.
We agreed that it was important to find a way to involve land defenders and hear first-hand from those at the frontlines of environmental and territorial conflicts. We therefore knew from the start that the project would have a transnational element. The easiest way to enable this was to hold any events online, but we felt like we also needed an element of in-person sharing, reflecting and creating, particularly given the subject of the project and the embodied nature of ecofeminist praxis. In negotiating the pros and cons of online and in-person events, and in line with our overall objectives, we came up with a format in two parts: the first event would be online, featuring three guest speakers from the frontlines: Ximena Gallardo Castro (environmental engineer and agricultural technician from Chile), Varin Mema (Nelly) Marubo (land defender and doctor in social anthropology from Brazil) and Diana Lilia Trevilla Espinal (feminist activist, artist and agroecologist from Mexico). We decided to make this event trilingual (Spanish, Portuguese and English) and open to all since the online technology facilitated this, and this resulted in 71 attendees joining us from different parts of the UK and from Latin America. Following the online event, 10 days later we held an in-person space in London open to Latinx identifying women and non-binary people and limited to 30 spaces to process the learnings from the first event collectively, through discussion, movement work and zine-making.
Both events were very well received by participants, and guest speakers also said they enjoyed being part of it. The number of attendees on the online event confirmed the relevance of the topic, and the simultaneous translation helped us make the event accessible to a range of audiences in the UK and Latin America. The in-person event in London, on the other hand, allowed us to digest the information and ideas from the first event in a slower pace and with greater involvement of our bodies and our senses. In both cases participants commented positively on the structure of the events and the way participation was facilitated, and they also reported having increased their knowledge of ecofeminisms as a result of participating.
The last element of the project is a fanzine which will include pieces produced during the workshop in London plus others collected through an open call. You can follow FALA for updates on this and other upcoming events and publications.