The year that was 2023
CENTRIC LAB
Centric Lab are prototyping ways to use health-based scientific evidence to support justice movements.
As we all settle in to the new year we wanted to share some of our highlights from 2023 with you.
2023 was a year of new relationships and landmarks.
We are not alone, we are part of an ecosystem, we want to celebrate this.
STARTING THE YEAR
We kicked off the year by launching healingimaginations.org: a growing digital library of healing practices rooted in Kinship and Solidarity by those facing supremacy structures, colonisation, displacement, and destruction of Ancestral Lands.?It features work by beautiful visionaries, writers, activists and organisers such as Abdirahim Hassan , Grace Carson , Amit S. , and Nataly Allasi Canales .
LATE JAN
We launched a piece of work with SHIFT, part of the London Legacy Development Corporation , looking at the community-centred health trends in East London. We interviewed people from across the 4 boroughs alongside data & trends analysis to help shape a community-oriented health impact strategy.
SPRINGTIME
In March we finally were able to be in the same time and place to catch up with the brilliant Dr. Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne , co-producer and radical mind behind the Planetary Dysregulation, Extractive Capitalism, and Healthcare series.
Have a listen here:
SUMMERTIME, WHEN THE LIVING IS EASY
In mid-July we worked with the Breathe London Community Programme run by 英国帝国理工学院 to help groups tackle the challenge of communicating real time air pollution data to target audiences. We facilitated a workshop that draws on participatory methods to co-design novel data visualisations.
Later in the summer we finally met in person with the powerhouse that is Angela Camacho, visual creative and co-author of the Tradition Ecological Knowledges & Urban Systems series of work - https://www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/programs/indigenous-health-justice
We were also invited by the Mayor of Newham to hold a workshop on kinship as a framework for looking at how a local authority can improve health outcomes from a systemic point of view. We aimed to encourage the ideation of solutions to come from community organisations as much as possible. The Black Panther Party were social revolutionaries in demonstrating that
“Everybody could benefit from taking a look at the Ten-Point platform that [the Black Panthers] had,” says Dr. Mary Bassett, former NYC Health Commissioner in Mayor de Blasio’s administration, whose career in public health started as a volunteer at the Panthers’ free clinic in Boston. “It’s fully in the tradition of documents like the Declaration of Independence or the ANC’s freedom charter. And to understand that [the Black Panthers] were about much more than the berets that they sported and the guns that they carried. They were about building a society that supports human dignity.”
Over the August bank holiday weekend our 9 month project with CIVIC SQUARE brought together 35 people and their families to mid-Wales to explore addressing systemic inequities and to communally create neighbourhoods that are life-sustaining. Hosted in partnership, the purpose of this collective peer-to-peer learning journey is to create the space and time for communities advocating for justice in their neighbourhoods to imagine, learn, and grow their own ecosystems, frameworks, and practices for healing through non-western epistemologies, data knowledges, and Kinship. Running from July 2023 to March 2024, through this journey over 9 months 35 participants from across the UK will learn together through dynamic exchanges with a range of peers from across the UK. The common goal will be to share knowledge, ideas and energy openly and generously in order to take action in neighbourhoods, with a focus on live and regular organising in place.
AUTUMN LEAVES
In September we received news that our project, with Clean Air for Southall & Hayes, in designing a health impact assessment from the community out received further funding from the The Young Foundation . The funds are being used for a new programme launching 24th Jan with 11 groups from around the UK.
In October we were in place with a women’s coop supported by Coffee Afrik CIC in Hackeny, London. It centres on supporting a community of Somali women of varying ages; an “Elders Council”. This group has been designed by Coffee Afrik and the Elders Council with a reimagined governance structure where the Elders Council design the programming, the language, the physical community space, the food served, and the monthly participatory micro grants panel. As women who experience multiple intersecting marginalisations they experience a number of health inequities rooted in inadequate housing, healthcare service, and culturally incompetent social services. The aim of this programme is to work in communion with the Elders Council in a way that recognises and honours their Islamic-Somali culture to support their advocating for improving the services that impact their health.
On 11th October 2023, 14 people, ranging from the fields of medicine, policy, law, abolition, science, data science, economics, and art gathered to declare our right to access AIR.?
INTO THE WINTER
In December as we were going into hibernation the lovely people at The Developer and Festival of Place published our study into Urban Sacrifice Zones in their beautiful publication.
You can read the original study here: https://www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/reports-playbooks/urban-sacrifice-zones-the-right-to-pollute
Thank you to everyone who made 2023 so enriching. 2024 is already blossoming beautifully, and we're still feeling from a gorgeous strategy retreat in the Brecon Beacons with some beautiful people.