Represent Women attended this year’s Women’s Resource Centre conference, Reclaiming Our Power: Organising for Change, held in Birmingham. The event brought together activists, leaders, and the women and girls sector from across the UK to reflect, connect, and strategise for a more equitable future.
Powerful Voices, Bold Ideas
The conference opened with a keynote speech from Baljit Banga of Hibiscus who spoke on the impact of Neo Liberalism and its impact on the way women within the sector and the seector itself had to adapt the economy of scale and output driven models and the losses this has entailed in delivering powerful feminist services. She also spoke on the need for feminism to include black and racially minoritised women.
The need to platform, uplift and share stories from black and racially minoritised women, who have often been erased form history despite being the global majority, was kept front and center throughout the day.
The conference included two panel discussions the first on The Political Impact of the Women’s Sector, which explored how grassroots black women led organising and advocacy are shaping national conversations and influencing policy. The second panel discussed the launch of the Alternative Women’s Economy in Manchester.
Represent Women in Action
We were proud to have two of our members lead workshop sessions during the day:
Dr. Sue Robson [link] delivered a session titled Reviving Emancipatory Practice in Women’s Organisations, challenging participants to rethink professionalism through a feminist lens.
Padma Roa from Sangini [link] led Reclaiming Our Power Through Creativity, an engaging workshop that celebrated the role of art and imagination in social change with participants writing declarations and creating Zine’s to express their experiences of the day.
Lots to take away
The day closed with a moving poetry performance by T Balogun, whose words captured the spirit of resilience and hope that ran through the entire event.
Erin Parker Leonard, Dircetoy of Policy and Advocacy at Represent Women shared her highlights,
‘This was my first WRC conference and it was a busy day full of passion, hope and sisterhood.
All of the women who spoke had different things to say but much of the same messages and themes were present. Vivienne Hayes welcomed with a strong message that, We are who we are waiting for. We covered so many different topics through the workshops, panel discussions and through the poetry from Tunde Balogun MSc which was invigorating and inspired.
It was great to hear from Jess Phillips about how we can influence change and that we need to keep turning up! It was fantastic to be around women from our region too, Dr. Sue Robson Padma Rao and Pat Poinen! And meeting new colleagues too.
A great day, we were definitely well looked after with great food and more so plenty of food for thought! We left the conference energised, inspired, and more committed than ever to building a future where women’s voices are heard, valued, and empowered’