Braver Spaces Summer School

What is Braver Spaces Summer School

Braver Spaces Summer School is back for a second edition!

Braver Spaces summer school is a collaboration between Braver Spaces Antwerp and WeDecolonizeVUB. The summer school aims at combating our hegemonic idea on knowledge, knowledge production and diffusion. This by departing from the knowledge that resides within marginalized communities. This approach results in the redefinition of what knowledge is, and embraces the emotional component of knowledge, by moving beyond cognitive skills and bridging the binary categorization of arts and academia.

This summer school will give you the skills and know-how to navigate through the education system, develop a sense of belonging, and selfhood. This will be achieved by valorizing the knowledge, know-how, practices and beliefs within racialized communities. You will acquire skills to use your own positionality as an input to educate yourself, conduct research and engage in conversations with your journey as a valuable starting point. During this week you will learn the importance of your own stories and the importance of centering the histories that come from your communities. Through workshops and valuable exchanges with other participants you will learn how to build communities and embody practices in ways that will make you more resilient to the often-grueling study and/or workload you may encounter. Well-being will thus be an important aspect of the work, mental health specialists and embodiment practitioners will guide the mental health aspect of the summer school.

The exploration of alternative forms of knowledge has the potential to not only enrich our understanding of the world, but also to challenge the power dynamics that have traditionally underpinned the production and dissemination of knowledge, and our view on the world

This year’s theme: Diasporas and archiving

In today’s world, we are witnessing an increasing interest in exploring alternative forms of knowledge systems, particularly knowledge from marginalized communities that are not recognized as such. Diasporic communities have played an important role in combating this hegemonic understanding of knowledge. Archiving, on the other hand, is an important concept in this context, as it allows for preservation and diffusion of the work of those communities.

This is why this year’s edition will center the contribution of racialized diasporic communities in Europe that combat the hegemonic idea on knowledge. We will engage with facilitators on this work and on the importance of archiving these contributions.

The summer school will be held from Friday July 7th till Sunday July 14th in Antwerp and Globe Aroma in Brussels

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