Common Ground views decolonial pedagogies and the journey of decolonisation as a communal process of spiritual and collective healing that engages in learning and unlearning, unshaping and reshaping the narrative beliefs, spirit, culture, relationships and society.

Shifting relations from the soil up using interconnectedness, collective healing, horizontal and holistic methodologies, regenerative community and trust building, narrative change, well-being and creativity, and radical imagination.

The multidimensional crisis facing our societies (political, social, environmental), based on divisions and violence, creates wounds in the collective imagination and existence. As an attempt and invitation to heal from these structural harms, and to find ways out of the hegemonic narratives of dehumanisation and hierarchies applying to knowledge and life, this project aims to shift paradigms through creating a collaborative network of decolonial, horizontal exchange and co-creation.

What knowledge can emerge from a group of young people with diverse backgrounds, in an exchange with generational, national, and cultural diversity ? From the margins and peripheries - what do we all have to learn and to share? What can flourish from the radical imagination of arts and community building?

Through a collective process with interconnectedness as Common Ground premise, mixing research and art practice in a continuous program, the aim is to envision other possible systems to live in horizontal and fertile ways. At the end of the year-long programme, as a way to expand the process and learnings, the group has worked together to co-create a Living Art Installation open to the public, materialising the collective research and reflexions, and open during the Refugee Week at the Pionirfläche Otto at Haus der Statistik.

Contributors:

Mozh Dinani (Iran), Parimah Avani (Iran), Marie Berlowitz (USA), Ananya Bordoloi (India), Júlia Capanema (Brazil), Isadora Canela (Brazil), Elsa Cuissard (France), Jade Dreyfuss (France), Toba Folorunsho (Nigeria), Ruwanthi Gajadeera (Sri Lanka), Daria Gizdavu (Romania), Izra Marie Jans (Belgium), Kashushu Karungi (Uganda), Thaís Machado (Brazil), Brook Morejón (Germany), Daria A. Moussavi (Iran), Ruve Narang (India), Sara Owusu-Ansah (Ghana), Yasemin Tekgürler (Turkey), AnK (Cuba), and Nilra Zoraloglu (Turkey).

Supported by Common Ground and WEBS