WELCOME TO SOLIDARITY HULL CIC.

What is Solidarity Hull CIC ?

Solidarity Hull is a community organisation run by and for people from around the world. Through a process of critical education, that creates a space of belonging and support, we aim to grow our confidence whilst celebrating and critiquing our cultural identities allowing us to enter in to genuine dialogue with the wider community to bring about positive change on a local, national and international level.

Solidarity Hull CIC is a growing community of people in Hull, who come from many different countries of the world. We dream of becoming a rich mix of people with talents and skills, learning together to live good lives here in Hull (and the UK). We want to make Solidarity Hull CIC a place where women , young people and young adult from all over the world work together to make a second home in an atmosphere of equality and belonging; a space where we are free to make mistakes and learn from them, where we build the confidence to dream our dreams, discover our talents, share our skills, our stories and support our families in Hull (and the UK).

Objectives

• To have our own space where we create a home based on belonging, love, peace, and freedom where we can celebrate differences, whilst respecting each other, building a community of understanding.
• To explore the wider context of refugee and migrant experiences and to reclaim a language which is often dehumanising and creates negative labels. We want to share our experiences and daily struggles to raise awareness about the realities in our communities, discuss ideas and gain inspiration to act upon them.
• To utilise popular education and experiential learning as a collective, learning from one another and sharing our learning with others.
• To identify and name the world we live in – analyse the problems we face and find possible solutions.
• To create spaces for genuine and engaging dialogue where we can explore the realities and differences between countries of our origin to take actions to bring about change.
• To investigate the mode of production, where resources come from, causes of war, the forced displacement of people and sharing our experiences to challenge and create alternative and egalitarian means of production.
• Expressing and discovering our hidden gifts and skills using creative arts and other means.
• To be a self-determined and self-reliant organisation, creating a wider network and movement, locally, nationally and internationally.
• To continue our journey of empowerment by sharing and learning from each other and using our power to bring about positive change.
• To challenge stereotypes and discrimination such as racism and sexism, to discuss these issues within our own community but also with the wider community. To provoke emotions, encouraging people to look beyond first impressions to create understanding and empathy.
• To seek the leadership of women.
• To utilise collective strategies – To create politics for people, not politicians.
• To celebrate and explore how we create our identities, our similarities as well as our differences to enable us to grow as a movement.
• As a collective based in Hull we want to learn to better navigate the city in order to support others and ourselves in coping and thriving in new places and spaces. Contributing to a welcoming community.

We aim to:

• Make spaces where we treat each other as we want others to treat us
• Learn to work together to bring about change for all people of all nations through the use of popular education and creative arts.
• Learn to use our imaginations, share our skills and talents, and show others in Hull, in the UK and in the world, who we really are.
• Support our families to settle in Hull (and the UK).

If you want to join us please follow links in Contact us page of this website.

This summer has been dead busy for us at Solidarity Hull. Some of us participated in the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) conference in Cartagena , Colombia, with our colleagues from Nation of Migration Awakening the Diaspora (NOMAD) and  the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience of  Coventry University.   We spent a week in Cartagena learning about the colonial history of the city as well as actively participating in the conference where we delivered a workshop on the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire.  We also took a trip to south Colombia to visit a Campesino community where we learnt about their way of life and shared ours.

Solidarity Hull also took part in Refugee week, in preparation we run a session where we discussed what it means to be a person of refugee or migrant background living in the UK, as a result we made a placard that expressed this and exhibited it at Queen’s Garden, where we had a picnic and took the opportunity to outreach by handing out flyers with all our weekly activities.

In August we travelled to London to be part of our sister organisation NOMAD’s launch event where we experienced an amazing event full of music, art and important discussions. We also enjoyed some sightseeing in London.  At the end of August, as part of our Yes2Youth project, Nomad and Solidarity Hull met for our joint residential at Braich Goch, our centre in Wales. There we reflected upon the journey of this project using different participatory techniques to evaluate our progress; what we learnt, the challenges we encountered and our plans for the future.

We also took part in Leeds West Indian Carnival as we were invited by our other sister organisation Leeds Dynamics. It was a wonderful event full of colour, music and dance where we mingled with hundreds of other carnivaliers.

Right now we are preparing for Mad Pride carnival. For the past few weeks we have been having masks and costumes making workshops as well as dance and theatre workshops in preparation for the parade.   We are all very excited!!