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Report transcript in: Isaac's accessing well-being, services.
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Isaac's accessing well-being, services.
Please Report the Errrors?
But being for me is like that holistic,
um,
kind of body mind, spirit, soul.
Um,
yeah, all of it
all wrapped in one
that we have a big problem in this country
that sometimes we shy away from talking about these topics.
So racism has affected me in many, many levels. Uh, or
and that might be that very deliberate racism which doesn't acknowledge my,
um, racial identity,
my cultural needs
to those kind of microaggressions. And I think
when you have those experiences don't really want to engage with
the best things that can support you.
There's a lot of emphasis on Eurocentric, Western,
um, models and understandings of well being.
And actually, it's much more than that.
It can be about your identity that can be your sexual identity,
your racial identity,
your
disability identity, all of that that intersect.
And I think sometimes when you get there, they are often full of white people
and they are full of
white people. That may not even benefit from that support in a way that you could.
And that's how you create
space for people
that can really benefit from that racialized perspective.
Um, how
people in those organisations
are
people from global majority backgrounds themselves.
How we're not just stepping into
using
kind of
Western
well being, and arts kind of approaches
how we can embrace different approaches
dance, music, art therapy. Do all of that kind of stuff
and do it through a non
Western lens. And
they can use language that doesn't connect or resonate with you. They can
just make you feel unwelcome. They can have many barriers. You know,
they
often like I live in a very nice, affluent, um,
part of East London.
That
and those very things that you would think of arts and well being,
like they happen at a particular time of the day.
You have to contribute a particular amount of money.
There's a big waiting list you need to know about it.
In the first instance you get there,
there's often a white middle class person sat there delivering,
and if you've had challenges around power and privilege and
you know
racism, like that's not gonna be a safe space for you in the first place.
Mhm.
First of all,
the the answer isn't medication and
talking therapies and all those kind of things.
In my view, well being services, art services,
art organisations and well being organisations.
They are really important function in supporting people,
particularly people from minoritized communities,
global majority communities.
Uh when we've accessed services in other places, they've been racist,
they've been other,
We've been re traumatised, traumatised
and I think that the arts and well being services could be the antidote to that.
They can support people
around meeting the holistic needs and
they can use
approaches that are culturally, um, identity wise, much more nuanced.
Um, they're safe. They can be safer environments.
I think
they need to be more diverse and their approaches need to be more diverse.
They need to be rooted in anti racism, anti oppress.
And I think that lines with arts and well being in my head at least, um,
I think there's not enough often,
um, you know,
it's really difficult to find those kind of organisations. These
arts and well being
organisations
first of all,
don't appeal
to
black and brown people
because what you're seeing is white people inviting you into a space,
um so not accessible
in terms of our hearts and minds. They're not accessible because
they're structured in a way that doesn't necessarily necessarily recognise
the stuff that we're coming with.
And I think it is fair to say that
you know, when you are somebody from a
global majority background or black and brown person on when
I was
first community bane, whatever word you use,
you might have some challenges in your life because of poverty.
You might have some challenges in your life because of,
you know, educational injustice.
You might have some challenges in your life because of mental health.
You know, like we know all of this stuff exists
within
our communities.
Yet
the various services and opportunities to engage are
9 to 5,
um,
in spaces and places that are not friendly or don't
resonate with us.
Um, they're often led by people that don't sound and look like us.
They often use approaches that
don't
recognise our cultural or religious or,
um, identity,
um,
within
the approach.
And certainly they are often,
you know, not safe spaces. So they often have,
um,
active racism. Um, they have microaggressions in there. They have,
you know, just sort
of awareness. Like what it truly means to be inclusive
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