You are invited into a supported space of transformative compassionate curiosity, to ask ourselves and each other 'what is it like to be you?’ in restorative and re-humanising ways.
Otherness Lab 
Join OpenEdge's team of scholar-practitioners to explore the phenomenon and experiences of 'otherness', 'othering' and 'being othered' in our personal lives and within the systems and structures of our communities. 


​Using our own, every-day examples we reflect on our experiences in 'mainstreams' and 'margins', how and why they arise, how we understand them, and how we are impacted in ourselves and in our relationships with each other.
 
We consider the costs to us personally and collectively when we do not explicitly and proactively give attention to 'othering' in all our endeavours.
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We reflect on the impacts and continuation of historic norms of othering in our societies, communities and groups, as well as how unconsciously reproducing division and separation in our current endeavours to bring change, stops us creating the very future we long for, no matter how well intentioned we are.

We work in ways that re-connect us beyond 'them and us’, beyond centring our own or one particular experience of life …beyond reproducing otherness.

In the Lab we also explore the confusion, disconnection and challenges that can arise when trying to have conversations about diversity and inclusion, power and privilege in our communities and organisations.
Oppression spares no body. Injustices are both systemic and intimate, taking root in the flesh.
~Mary Watkins
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We embody positivity and enthusiasm to embrace discomfort and experiences that may be different to our own. We value this kind of space as an exciting possibility for profound connection and transformation.
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We invite you to reach for your honest, courageous, reflective self, put on your systemic goggles, brea​k the violence cycle, and grow in the Otherness Lab with OpenEdge's experienced team of scholar-practitioner-explorers!
Through participatory activities for connection, reflection and learning, we focus on key themes such as
  • the tragedy of how we have learned to engage with difference and diversity
  • ​how groups and communities create centres and margins
  • how equity and inclusion serves everyone
  • what is a domination system and how does it happen?
  • power-with and power-over relations
  • becoming conscious of dominant, centralised perspectives and experiences
  • unconscious and normalised creation of outliers and 'others'
  • the intrinsic link between underlying assumptions/ideas, structures and personal behaviours 
  • spectrums of privilege and marginalisation
  • decolonising, and why diversity is not enough
  • the neurobiology of oppression
  • connecting political, social, personal, emotional, and physical experiences 
  • untold storytelling and multiple social truths
  • beyond reductionism to plural identities 
  • beyond moralistic judgments of self and others
  • experiencing interdependency of human needs
  • receiving all life as feedback as a way of centring all experiences
  • why impact beyond intention is essential
  • experiencing 'difference' as enriching
  • integrating concepts, emotions, experiences, skills, capacity into embodied action
  • liberation and new choice in engaging with difference, inclusion, equity and justice…
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