Felicia Holman shares reflections on her Public Newsroom curated series and resources for designing your own brave space.
By Felicia Holman and Ellie Mejía
Illustrations: Ellie Mejía
This fall I curated a series of Public Newsrooms that we called, “Community Care in the 2020 Election: We Gon Be Alright,” which began by talking about building safe space. On Nov. 21 at Experimental Station, my friend & fellow multi-hyphenate artist Nikki Patin presented her empowering Surviving The Mic workshop about nurturing brave spaces for self & community—the perfect bookend to the series.
As I reflect on this curatorial experience, I want to first thank City Bureau (especially Andrea Hart & Ellie Mejía) for selecting my series pitch and for being such great production/community partners. Next, I am so grateful for each presenter of this three-session series; Jenna Anast led the series opener on Halloween at 345 Art Gallery. Then Tanuja Jagernauth presented the following week on Nov. 7 at Build Coffee, using Toni Morrison’s “Racism and Fascism” essay as a guiding text. Each of these dynamic creative women of color was my No. 1 pick for the respective date they covered (hallelujah)!... #twasordained #realrecognizereal
Of course, I am so grateful to all the attendees who made their way out (especially on that snowy Halloween) to engage in these conversations and to learn and share relevant best practices for community care in the face of continued depletion & marginalization. As I've stated previously, no matter who's occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., I want us to know that we're going to be good because we've activated our own agency, autonomy, and mobility.
To officially close out the series, I wanted to share an illustrated deep dive by Ellie Mejía of one of the main practices shared by all three presenters—building a brave space. You can read more about it below and use the illustrations as a tool to build your own.
— Felicia Holman
Brave Spaces 101
By Ellie Mejía
What is a brave space?
Brave spaces can look, sound and feel different from one another, but the general idea is to cultivate a productive dialogue where participants are encouraged to speak honestly and critically from their own experience toward the end of mutual learning and liberation.
How is it different from a safe space?
It’s hard to define a brave space without bringing up its now ill-reputed sibling, the safe space. If you paid attention to the news in the mid- to late-2010s, you probably heard at least one university administrator or conservative talk show host frame safe spaces as antithetical to freedom of speech.
—Jay Ellison, Dean of Student, University of Chicago (in a 2016 letter sent to incoming freshmen)
In fact, the term safe space dates back to the mid-20th century, and has long been associated with movement building, according to Diana Ali, writing for the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Pre-Stonewall, queer activists created safe spaces where participants could be “open about their respective identities, with lower risk of negative societal or legal repercussions at a time when many states still had anti-sodomy laws in effect,” Ali writes. And during the Civil Rights Movement, “Freedom Riders created literal safe spaces on their interstate commutes, packed together on buses...These tight-knit communities were places to foster actionable political strategies and propel the movement forward.”
In other words, the “safe” in safe space meant participants aimed to protect one another from legal or bodily harm, at the hands of the state or otherwise (and not, as Ellison suggests, differing viewpoints).
Today, safe no longer means safety from legal trouble and/or state violence, but also psychological and emotional security. While a safe space may try to foster comfort, a brave space encourages mutual learning and accountability. Which takes us to the next question...
What are the elements of a brave space?
At our 126th Public Newsroom, host Nikki Patin wrote down “brave” on a big sticky note and “safe” on another, asking attendees to write down what they associated with each term. Afterward, she started a conversation by asking attendees, “Do you have a place where you feel safe, or moments when you feel safe?”
A handful of us said we felt safe in our homes or bedrooms. But one or two participants said they didn’t have a constant safe place, mentioning instances of police brutality that occurred in the victims’ homes, unprompted. When we looked back at the sheets we had just written on, the words “protected,” “privileged” and “white people” appeared next to “safe,” while “intersectional” and “being a Black person on this planet” were under “brave.”
The exchange underscored an important point: Even at a well-intentioned gathering, safety can’t be guaranteed in a world that is unsafe to marginalized people. Fostering a brave space comes with that recognition.
That doesn’t mean that organizers of brave spaces are absolved from trying to facilitate dialogue in a way that steers away from harm. Rather, it acknowledges “the likelihood that we will be uncomfortable when investigating issues of race, privilege, and oppression and our roles within them,” as the LA chapter of Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE-LA) expresses.
And so the “brave” here has a few meanings. It acknowledges that marginalized people have to be brave in diverse ways every day. It also makes room for the fact that we all have different understandings of the world and the ways in which it operates. We acknowledge that in speaking from our own experience, we may slip up. But we agree to hold one another accountable when a mistake is made, and we hope our dialogue will lead us to knowledge we couldn’t have arrived at alone.
How do I make my own brave space?
To create your own brave space, or to introduce a brave space framework to a group you are already part of, you need three things:
A group: Who do you want to show up? Depending on the purpose of the gathering, you might want to invite colleagues, neighbors, members of a community you are part of or even total strangers. Think about what you want to accomplish through this conversation, then think about whose perspectives you want to include in that dialogue.
One person or a few people to facilitate: Since you’ll be asking participants to be vulnerable, you want to make sure at least one person in the room is attentive to the group’s needs. A good facilitator should aim to give everyone an opportunity to participate, make sure the conversation adheres to ground rules and be open to feedback. That last part is important; as pointed out above, facilitators cannot guarantee safety. They can’t always control who attends, they definitely can’t control what is said and they’re learning as they go, too. If you’re planning to facilitate a brave space, practice is the really the best teacher, but there are resources to get you started (try this, this, and this on for size).
A brave space agreement: This is a set of ground rules for the conversation(s) to come. Typically, a facilitator will give everyone a chance to contribute to the brave space agreements. At Jenna Anast and Tanuja Jagernauth’s Public Newsrooms, we started off the evening by asking attendees what they would need to feel brave in the space. You can see both of the collectively generated brave space agreements below.
From Jenna Anast’s Public Newsroom on October 31st.
From Tanuja Jagernauth’s Public Newsroom on Nov. 7.
The beauty of a brave space agreement is that they vary because they are collectively generated, so the ground rules that make one group feel safe may be totally different from those another group creates. Still, you will probably notice some general patterns as you look through brave space agreements. There are many that you can consult as you prepare to host a brave space—you can find some here, here and here.
These agreements will be helpful in guiding the conversation. Still, a dialogue is a live, messy thing. So Jagernauth recommends creating a course of action in case dialogue does bring about harm.
— Tanuja Jagernauth (via email)
Now go on and be brave! If this blog helps you create your own brave space, please let us know by tweeting it out and tagging us.
And if you are curious about the Public Newsroom series, you can check out recordings of Jenna Anast and Nikki Patin’s newsrooms, and you can read notes from Tanuja Jagernauth’s workshop here.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the full name of AWARE-LA. The group is the Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere Los Angeles.
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