Hello. We’re in the process of updating this website which is old and clunky and doesn’t say what we’d like to say about ourselves in 2024…

In the meantime we want to share a little of where we are, in worlds which feel increasingly grief stricken, in times which call on us to think and act differently…

gentle/radical is in a shape-shifting, emergent, uncertain moment, a place of extended reflection and countless questions. The urgency to think and act differently has led us to pause activities over the summer of 2024, following more than 7 years of non-stop work and cultural delivery. In this pause, we’re finding commonality with comrades across community spaces, arts and cultural spaces, healing and social justice spaces, who are asking critically how we continue trying to realise dreams for just futures, within systems that increasingly press down upon us with impunity. 

Health has been a focus in this time of pausing. Looking underneath the bonnet of any small cultural organisation in Wales at the moment, you’ll find people running on empty and burnout, resourced just enough to sustain practices that are at deeper levels, unsustainable. Our time out has allowed space for listening, some restoration, and temporary exit from regimes which thrive on our continued busyness and lack of replenishment.

In the last two years we spent time developing a project called Slowness as a Bridge. We learnt a lot in this period around the myths of slowness. We learnt just how many iterations of slowing down are needed for us as communities, as residents, as practitioners, as artists to feel sustainable in our work, lives, bodies, nervous systems. We unearthed just how much needs to be undone to halt the march of infinite growth, hyper productivity, wayward objectives and meaningless targets in times of collapsing systems. How much needs to be held as we witness unfathomable levels of harm on our screens, as we confront the effects of decades of systemic harm in our communities and on our streets. And in climates where rest, radical care, and connection to nature are commoditized with expert artfulness, we’re asking ourselves what it means to do less, whilst journeying deeper. adrienne maree brown’s invitation to travel ‘inch-wide mile deep’ remains a constant guide.

Living in these times, we’re mindful that generating more expert commentary on how to fix what’s broken can feel like a further exercise in denial and displacement. As knowledge for how to do differently proliferates, and we swim in a sea of accumulating conversations, panels, policies, platforms, thought pieces, texts, theories, methodologies, strategies, articles, podcasts, advice, resources, tool kits, reports and case studies – we are left wondering about the time and space needed to put this much needed knowledge – into practice. 

We feel anchored by two quotes of late, which feel like living invitations to return to:

From Otto Scharmer:

The difficulties we have in meeting today’s global challenges…are not caused by a knowledge gap. We have all the knowledge we need. The problem is a knowing-doing gap: a disconnect between our collective consciousness and our collective actions

And from Prentis Hemphill:

There’s enough information. We all have enough information about what’s happening, how it’s happening, there’s not much more information that’s needed. But I think in this moment what’s actually needed is for us to be changed by the information. To be changed in our behaviours, to be changed inside, to be changed in our relationships, to be changed in what we’re willing to do. I think this is the moment to be changed by what we know.

As we head into autumn and winter (writing as we do in September 2024) we’ll be attempting to connect less with knowing, and more with the possibilities of being changed by what we know. We’ll be finding ways of continuing to do this alongside our neighbours, in creative ways that feel like the birth right of us all. We hope by the end of the year we might have an updated website. We hope by the end of the year we’ll be changed a little more.

In the meantime for occasional updates, you can find us on our Instagram page. Or feel free to get in touch on hello@gentleradical.org

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