Creating feminist spaces: occupying hostile environments

Abstract

We are a new, small and emerging social justice network of feminist activists, academics and community workers, building a collaborative, capacity-releasing feminist network by making connections between UK and globally-based allied projects of resistance. We work to create co-equal and co-creative safe(r) spaces and share our lived experiences of occupying and resisting hostile environments where we have been made to be out of place, unwelcome and unsafe. We do not assume that these spaces are felt in common between us, but they enable us to take up our own space, to tell our own stories, to move across boundaries and borders, to be heard and visible (where desired), and to resist. Using arts-based methods of enquiry, we pose living questions in our work together which are ongoing and ever-adapting alongside our lived experiences of occupying and resisting hostile environments.