Hey everyone,
Last year (2020) the Decision Making Plenary (DMP) approved the plan of everyone doing anti-racism training and voted to ask Bi Continuity Ltd to pay for it. It's my plan to make this mandatory for all attendees before they can attend BiCon 2021.
Bi's of Colour (the organisation and individuals) have told us that we have two sets of issues with racism at BiCon (which we looked at on the anti racism review in 2020)-
- microaggressions
- organising systems that allow repeated mistakes to be made
This mandatory anti-racism training will address the first point.
I'll be working on a number of things through the year to address the second.
Accessibility
We completely understand that if we are making training mandatory we need to make sure it's accessible. To do this we'll run a suite of 'offerings' for people who may need adaptations, based on the youtube recording we did last year. This will include:
- BSL
- subtitles / closed captions
- doing the training in shorter sections
- doing the exercises in a different format
There are many options we can look at and we can liaise with people about there individual needs. If you want to chat to us abiut making the training accessibe for you please email biconuk2020@gmail.com – we'll be publishing these soon (we've already been 'testing' the approaches and ideas with our community too, I'm going to personally make every effort possible to support those with access difficulties through this training)
Exemptions
Exemptions will obviously made for those who have:
- lived experience of racism (in the way that the training speaks about, i.e. Black, Brown or Asian peoples experiences), or
- have completed other relevant/more recent training
However, we want the training to be welcoming and you can meet other people in the BiCon communty and make new friends at the sessions, so everyone is very welcome to come to the training even if you meet one of these exemptions. Email biconuk2020@gmail.com to discuss.
Booking
When you book this year you’ll get twp options:
- to express you need to attend the training
- to express that you don’t (because of one of the reasons above)
Those who say they don’t need to attend the training fall into two groups:
- lived experience
- did the training last year / have other relevant/recent training
For those with lived experience of racism, we sucessfully applied for a grant to pay a consultant to discuss lived experience with you, so someone will be in touch. For those who say that they ‘did the training last year’ or ‘have other more relevant training’ you’ll get me to discuss that with you.
Going Forward
And after our 2021 training run finishes, you’ll get a unique code that you can present to future BiCon teams to show you have already completed the training and allow you to book your ticket.
I’m going to put a vote into the DMP this year to say that we should make some sort of compulsory anti-racism commitment similar to this training for the next few years so that we can properly assess the impact of the training and if it makes BiCon a more welcoming space for People of Colour.
If you feel you do not want to complete the training, and you have no relevent exeptions, then you will not be able to attend BiCon 2021. However, please email biconuk2020@gmail.com and I'll look into DMP only tickets for past attendees only if you want to come to that.
So to recap the main point here, if you want to attend BiCon 2021 online (or future BiCons pending a vote at the DMP), then you will need to register and attend anti-racism training before it. Please sign up to the mailing list (HERE) and stay tuned for email updates.
Thank you so much folks
Kate
(2020 review info in detail here – https://2020.bicon.org.uk/bicon-anti-racism-review-2020/)
Details of how to do the training are here: https://2021.bicon.org.uk/anti-racism-training/how-to-do-anti-racism-training/