• Addressing the Ghost

The Addressing the Ghost workshop is a creative story-writing workshop designed originally as a research methodology for my Masters degree at Concordia University. The research was looking at answering following questions:

• how do non-profit organizations attempt to build internal utopias through their HR and governance structures?
• where do individual & collective visions of “utopia” come from?
• what happens when those “utopias” they’re building continually “fail”?

The workshop was originally designed as a creative approach to answering these questions with research participants. Now, I am in the process of exploring what it would be like to redesign the workshop for use in organizing/non-profit spaces, towards things like building team cohesion, working through internal conflicts, and making sense of the dynamics in activist/non-profit spaces.

So what do we do in the workshop, and what could I get from it?

In the workshop, you’ll write “ghost stories” about your experience in organizing & non-profit work, specifically focused on the lessons and visions you carry with you in this work. The stories will be focused on internal dynamics within those spaces, like decision-making, how work is split up, socializing with peers, labour & benefits, etc.

The goal of the workshop is to understand our relationships to one another, and take a new approach to unpacking the challenges, conflicts, and beauty that comes from trying to create better futures.

We’ll be working together towards building connection and understanding commonalities with other people in organizing spaces, and engaging in collective ideation around the future and present states of this work – discussing both the challenges and what we hope to see change.

During the research version of this workshop, a lot of participants described it as “healing” or “cathartic”, and a new way of engaging with the “invisible” dynamics at play in their organizations. Though this is not explicitly a healing space, if you give yourself over to it fully, you will probably have a similar experience! Participants addressed things like burnout, the influence of the “outside world” on their ability to do their work, conflicts over things like racial dynamics or workload, etc.

Who’s the workshop for?

This workshop is open to activists, community organizers, and non-profit workers of all kinds. It is also open to those who have “left” those spaces, and been out for any amount of time.

What does the workshop cost?

Right now, I’m still in the process of piloting this workshop and figuring out how to transform it from a research-setting into “service oriented” one. Therefore the workshop is currently completely free, as participants will be part of its continued development process.

I will, however, make some “reciprocity requests” of participants:

• You are asked to provide feedback on the workshop experience & content (there’ll be a form for that!)
• You will be asked to share copies of your stories with the facilitator, as part of supporting the workshop’s continued development and my own journey with this work. Your stories will not be shared anywhere without consent, and should a paper or other published work be written and I think your story would be a good fit, I’ll reach out well in advance to request permission.

Anything else?

There are two versions of this workshop that I’m piloting, one longer and one shorter. The links at the top left take you to pages describing each one in more detail, and with links to register.

If you’re curious to read the thesis that came from the original research, you can find it here: Haunted Utopias: interpersonal culture, conflict, and cohesion in the activist-workplace. The thesis also includes the stories written by the research participants, if you want examples.